Purposefully Made

I could not and can not recall the amount of times I’ve asked the Lord about my validity not just as a leader but as a human being when I have nothing but brokenness. I’ve always struggled with comparing myself to others  ever since I was younger. I always felt different from everyone ever since I was a little girl, and having moved around a lot in my childhood that thought became part of my reality and my mentality. Everyone else was always moving in one similar/general direction, and I the opposite way. It felt like the Lord was always putting me through more struggles and challenges  and since I was on the journey “alone”, I ended up having to come up with coping strategies. Nobody else was there to help me get by.

It’s been the source of my tension and anxiety for a long time- the fear of being left behind, and being left alone. Broken. Battered. Shattered.

Then the past weekend, co-missionary K.M. shared about this Japanese art form, kintsugi.

I sat in my chair, trying to process this. How could someone want something simply for the fact that it was broken? How could someone say that they preferred damage over perfection? Or that damage was perfection?

God always works with irony.

I believe that the Lord simply wants me to learn to just love myself, especially the parts of me that are broken because that is where His blessings are poured out and most abundant. He called me knowing full well who I was. Still his love remains.

I was made different because there is a purpose specific to me.
I am made different because there is a calling designed just for me.

‘Sometimes the only way the good Lord can get into some hearts is to break them.’- Fulton Sheen

His plans are greater than mine. His ways are better than my ways. All I need to do is to give myself entirely to Him so that I can be bound together with His love and mercy, a signature of His divine grace.

“Once you have surrendered yourself, you make yourself receptive. In receiving from God, you are perfected and completed.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary