Why have our hearts broken into shattered pieces? Maybe it’s that we don’t love ourselves enough to change and make better choices. We continue to do the same old things, and expect different results, only to find ourselves with nothing left to hang onto, but the end of our rope.

On the day my daughter Shannon had run away from home, I hit rock bottom. It was pretty much as low as low gets. There aren’t really words to describe the hollow ache in my gut, knowing just how far I had drifted from the woman I really was.

I knew deep in my heart that my daughter had run away as a result of my own brokenness. The decisions that I was making over the years weren’t good choices to say the least, and had turned into one big chaotic mess. On the day of her runaway, the consequences of my choices came flying back at me like a boomerang! Boy, I certainly had reaped what I sowed.

It is a rude awakening when we are faced with nothing more than broken hearts and shattered lives because of the choices we have made.

In Search of the missing pieces from our lives, we run from ourselves, and our loved ones, until we can run no more and finally face the brokenness in our hearts.

It was at this lowest point of my life that I finally waited on God for answers with complete stillness. Out of sheer silence, I suddenly saw myself dangling over the heaping ruins of my life, and searching for a new direction. The movie theater in my mind slowly played out the drama scenes of someone I no longer recognized. My mouth went completely dry, as I felt my poisoned soul fill with nothing but guilt and shame. I could no longer put up a good front and pretend that my life was okay.

Having to face the truths about myself that day was an awakening. I had made every attempt to avoid my own painful mistakes as a wife and a mother. All at once, I felt the darkness covering me … completely smothering me. There was simply no other way out. I had to pick up the broken pieces of my heart and allow God to heal my soul.

The truth is that we can only run so far from ourselves, until we finally come to the end of out rope.

It is only in this moment when everything in our lives have completely fallen apart that we come to a crashing halt. When our harsh reality strikes, we are forced to face that we have tried to run from our own broken state of soul, and at the same time, have made the exhausting effort to outrun the power of the Lord.

Maybe we have been so busy making wrong choices that busyness has ruined our lives. One bad choice after another slowly erodes away at our souls … and our hearts begin to shrivel up as withered vines.

So where did I even begin to put the broken pieces of my heart back together again?

I began to face the truth about my unsatisfied feeling inside. I knew that in virtually every aspect of my life, I had settled for less than what my heart truly desired. I knew that God had created me for more. I began digging into the depths of my soul. I became painfully aware of this seemingly unending dark hole.

I was continually drawn into a place deep within me, an empty dry well that only God’s living water could fill up and satisfy. It was a deep yearning in my heart that I could no longer deny. I wanted so much more out of my life, but never knowing exactly why. In my mind was the never ending sound of a voice full of ridicule and shame, but I did everything to push it down, and hide it away.

Like many women, I looked to people for approval and affirmation. I also looked to material possessions for recognition. I lived for external pleasures, and for the moment of temporary fixes to satisfy these unreachable places.

But no matter how much I tried to fix the pieces of my brokenness, nothing ever seemed to fulfill me enough … and I never believed I was enough.

It was like the woman who drank from the well of living water everyday to satisfy her deep thirst (John 4:7-10). God put a deep longing in our hearts that was intended to lead us back to him. Only His unconditional love and acceptance can fill the empty places in our hearts, and quench the deepest thirst of our souls.

I don’t know why, but for most of us, it is only when we have continued to run too far, and are barely hanging onto the frayed edges of our lives, that we realize we have come to the end of our rope. We suddenly find ourselves feeling as though we are drifting away at sea, finally drowning in our tears of sorrows and lost hope. Only after hearing the echos of our own deafening silence, do we finally open the vacant places in our hearts that only God can fill. This is the day our journey begins … and when we truly find ourselves unbroken by the strong current of God’s everlasting love.

You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water (Ps. 63:1).

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