Guest Devotionalist -- Ariel Allison

BROKEN

- Listen to Broken- By Ariel Allison

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”

- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

My family put the “funk” in dysfunction. Not to say that my childhood was entirely traumatic. There were moments of pure joy amidst the poverty and pain. You see, I am a child of the hippie movement, a daughter of two black sheep. Non-conformists. Off the grid. Off the map. And out of whack. We lived at the top of the Rocky Mountains, in a home with no running water or electricity. I spent my days lost in the pages of a book, running barefoot through the sagebrush, and climbing pine trees. I know what it means to find God in a mountain sunrise. And I also know what it feels like to be abandoned. Lonely. Hungry.

As Ernest Hemingway so aptly put it, the world breaks everyone. We live in a fallen world where we are subject to experiences God never wanted for us. So what do we do with that brokenness? Where do we take it? We can either rail against God, shaking our first in anger or we can believe in faith that God allows our pain for a purpose. He allows it for our good and for His glory.

“For the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

- Psalm 34:18

Brokenhearted. Crushed in spirit. Close. God is close in those moments. He longs to save, to comfort. He longs to be a Father to that little girl in the mountains. He is eager to comfort the woman who finds herself alone after twenty years of marriage. He pursues the man trapped in addiction. He desires to erase the shame of the abused child. He is waiting for us today at work, at home, as we read these words and as we remember what is broken in our lives. He is close.

I would have never known God had I not known what it means to be broken. I wouldn’t be able to cry with the woman who never knew her father, if I had not also struggled to know mine. All these years later I see that there was great purpose to my pain, and I choose to embrace it because my healing has brought glory to God. As Hal Urban observes, “a broken bone becomes even stronger when it heals, and so do we.”

Ariel Allison is a published author who lives in a small Texas town with her husband and three young sons. When not writing books or caring for her family, she indulges her penchant for adrenaline-infused madness such as rock climbing, running marathons, and jumping off bridges – as if raising three pre-school boys were not adventure enough! A voracious reader since childhood, Ariel has spent much of her life learning and honing the craft of writing. She is the co-author of Daddy Do You Love Me: a Daughter’s Journey of Faith and Restoration (New Leaf Press, 2006). She ponders on life as a mother of all boys at www.themoabclub.blogspot.com and on her thoughts as a redeemed dreamer at www.arielallison.blogspot.com.