When Windows Break

     “There’s a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

~ Leonard Cohen

 

Do you ever wish that everything was made of plexiglass, that material that won’t break no matter how hard outside forces beat upon it? Do you ever wish that no storm, no matter how brutal, could shatter the windows by which you see the world, and by which the world sees you? Do you ever wish that you were as whole on the inside as you act on the outside- that you could lift the opaque shutter that you have so carefully garbed yourself with so that a warm, radiant light could cascade in?

 



 

It seems as though our society has an impenetrable, perhaps even unbreakable, fear of brokenness. We live our day to day lives as if we can simply hide behind a shade of immaculate wholeness- because what would happen if people could see beyond the beloved façade? What would happen if people could see inside the gaping holes that make us who we are, if they could see the jagged shards of glass crumbling to the ground in hopelessness? Somehow, we put ourselves under the suffocating impression that we’re the only ones, the only ones who have something missing, the only ones who are crumbled and so seemingly irreparable. Somehow, everyone else has it all together.

 

I am a victim of this mindset, and it’s not just something that lingers in my past. I am a professional in the business of putting up a front. I smile way too much, even when I’m not actually happy. I’m always “Fantastic” every time someone asks because I feel like it’s expected of me. I hate admitting that I need help as I try so fiercely to help those around me. A passerby may look at the quiet, simple shutter I have drawn and see tranquility without knowledge of the angry tornado that has blown through. Behind the shutter, dusty cobwebs fester. More glass falls. No light comes in. No light goes out. Just darkness. Painfully comfortable darkness. Yet somehow, I am blinded to it. It looms over everything I say and do- even with God. I’ll plead on behalf of everyone else under the sun- and when it comes to the end of my lukewarm prayers? “Oh, yeah. I’m fine God. Peachy, really.” As if I could fool the one who has numbered the very hairs on my head. As if He doesn’t know the prideful, guilty condition of my heart.

 



 

But He does. David, a biblical king who was no stranger to brokenness, perhaps expresses this better than anyone. In an epiphany of God’s incredible omniscience, he cries out: “O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me . . . I can never escape your spirit! I can never flee your presence!” (Psalm 139:1,7) We can’t play games with God. He isn’t impressed with our false expressions of wholeness. He’s like that one friend who always knows when we’re lying. And something tells me God really doesn’t appreciate being lied to.

 

He despises a deceitful tongue. But you know what He doesn’t despise? A broken spirit. Take a look at what David says in Psalm 51 as He laments before God with fresh authenticity: “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it. You do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, God, you will not despise.” It is in our times of greatest despair that God longs to heal us with the complete sufficiency of Himself. He knows our needs and our inequities. He isn’t the arrogant man who abhors the rugged mess of a broken window. He’s the pesky dove who lands on the windowsill and longs to come inside.  God isn’t afraid of what you have hidden behind a shutter of durability. There’s a reason He didn’t make you out of plexiglass. He made you out of weak, fragile human flesh- not so that you feel broken and beaten down, but so that you feel broken and lifted up. Because at the end of the day, He looks at the heaping pile of shattered glass that you have tried so hard to cover up and says, “Wow. I made that. And I love it so, so much.”

 

It’s okay to admit that you don’t have it all together. It’s okay to express your fears, your doubts, and your weaknesses. It’s okay to fall on your knees and cry out to God in helpless desperation. Slowly but surely, the shutter will be lifted. A luminescent glow will pierce through the void left by your beautiful brokenness. With this glow, you will be rescued from the shadows of darkness. You will be freed from your blindness. You will see that you aren’t the only one; you never were. God will take all of the fragments that you’ve been struggling to put together into His own hands. He’ll help you find wholeness.

 

But personally? I think He’ll leave a small crack so that His divine light might always find its way through.