The Breaking Point

© Staci Stallings

I cannot explain why this is exactly, but I know it to be true. God is giving me a crash course in breaking points. I don’t mean little breaking points like you broke a nail. I mean soul-crushing, gut-wrenching breaking points where you just scream out, “Why, God? Why? This is so unfair!”

There have been breaking points in my own family, in my friends, and in people I am just coming to know. Break downs, breaking hearts, broken lives… so many hurts, so much suffering that I can’t help but ask the Lord, “Why? Why would You allow this? Why? These are Your children whom You love in ways we cannot fathom, and yet You allow these things to happen. Why?”

As I have often written, many lessons in the physical realm are present, I believe, to explain things in a deeper, spiritual realm. Thus it is with a broken bone. Most people know that when a bone breaks and is reset, the healed part is stronger than the rest of the bone. The healing actually makes the bone stronger than before it was broken.

Does a broken bone hurt? As the owner of two previously broken bones, I can attest that the answer is: YES! Is it fun to have a broken bone? NO! Would I ever on my own understanding choose to have a broken bone? NO! And yet… And yet…

Life throws things at us, and if life is taking a rest, the world gets into the act. Disease, death, heartache, addiction, divorce, abuse, the suffering of loved ones, the pain of others that we can’t fix no matter how much we want to. All of these are very real. And all in one way or another point to something broken, something that needs healing, some point in us that needs to be turned over to Him because just like a broken bone, we cannot heal it. He has to.

I have heard it said that “God never gives us more than we can handle.” I’ve heard it, but I don’t believe it. I think God does, in fact, give us more than we on our own can handle. Because if we could handle it, what need would we have of going to Him? If we could handle it, why would we ever have cause to get to know Him on the deepest levels, those levels where no one else knows us, those levels where we often don’t even know ourselves? Those levels where our deepest fears reside. Those levels where our deepest sorrows lie.

As difficult as this sounds, I believe that like a good shepherd who will break the leg of a wandering sheep so that it will not get itself into more danger, God will in fact push us to the breaking point and then push once more so that we will break. Only when the bone is broken can it be healed and become stronger.

What needs broken in us the most? Our belief that we can do it. Our belief that we have to be “strong”. Our belief that these things He puts into our lives are somehow tests to see how strong we are. The reality is: He knows our breaking points—maybe better than we do. He knows the very things that will puncture our hearts so that we cry out to Him. He knows the things standing between Him and us, and He will break those things so that even in those areas we rely on Him.

Maybe our children are the one thing we cannot give over to Him. We feel responsible for them. We feel He gave them to us, and so we are to fix them to the best of our ability. And they break. They become willful. They leave the church. They go off the path. They run from His love and ours, and no matter what we try, we can’t seem to get them back on track.

It’s tough, but we have to learn to give them to God. Because what I can’t do. He can.

Maybe it’s our job or a co-worker. No matter what we try there is still angst and turmoil. Maybe it’s time to turn that over to God. It’s tough, but remember: I can’t. He can.

It sounds brutally cruel, but what I have found by walking with countless people through these breaking points is that it is only when they have hit bottom and found that all they had left was God, it was only there that they really found God.

Do I advocate having a breakdown simply so you can find God? No. But I think every little trial has the capacity to let us learn to lean on Him then, so that when the big trials come along we’re already in practice.

May the places you feel broken begin to be healed even in this very moment, and may you give over those places that feel as if they might break right now. He will heal them. More importantly, He will give you peace through the process. He knows what we most need, and what we most need is Him. That’s the lesson of every breaking point.