Broken Bones…Reset

During the summer, a father took his 6-year-old son to the park to meet his friends for their weekly game of touch football.

The father scored the final touchdown of the game and everyone on his team came running and jumped on him in celebration. All of the other boys did the same thing, making sure they were not missing out on the fun. With all of the weight of the 6 and 7-year-olds, the father fell to the ground and landed on his arm. Once the fun was over and everyone went home, the father realized that his arm was a little discolored, bruised and slightly painful to the touch; however, it was alright in his eyes.

The father went on with life and the more encounters he had with his wife, family, and friends they would tell him time and time again, “Your arm looks broken…your arm looks broken. You should get that looked at.”

He would always come back and constantly say, “No, no, no it is not that bad, it is just bruised. It is not broken.”

Three months later the father’s arm no longer hurt but looked to have a deformity and did not function properly. He was not able to hold the weight that it once was able to hold. He would get sudden pain out of the blue and would not be able to straighten it out like he was before. When there were signs that there was a problem with HIS eyes THEN he went to the doctor to see what was going on.

When he went to the doctor’s office, the doctor could immediately tell that the father’s arm was broken.

The doctor performed an x-ray of his arm and showed him where the break occurred. He told the father, “Your arm has a deformity and is not functioning properly because the broken bone started to mend in its broken state. The only way to remedy this is to re-break the bone and reset it in order for it to heal properly and to regain the full usage of your arm.”

The father dreaded the pain he knew he was about to endure. He kicked himself because he knew if he listened to his wife, other family members, and friends on the countless times they said go get it looked at he would not have to go through this soon coming pain again.

The doctor said, “We will have to reset the broken bone that mended wrong so it can now be healed correctly.”

________________

If you allow this story to find you…it can and will apply to you in more than one way.

How many of us have had something break our hearts, areas of our emotions, and even our thought-life when we were younger or even recently? How many of us can even say that we have known about these broken places yet we allow our hearts to mend broken which may have caused some deformities in our character, integrity, love walk, our views of leadership, etc.

Has anyone ever come to you and said something about you that they have noticed? You thought it was a bruise and simply brushed it off because “it’s not that bad”. A friend turned on you and caused great heartache and distress. You detached yourself emotionally from the moment of great pain and brushed it off and say, “It was just a bruise. I’ll be alright.” Or a person was interested in you and highly pursued you for months on end only to find out that they had been playing with the fragility of your heart and lied to you the whole time. This left you damaged when you found out they were married all along. BIG SLAP IN THE FACE! That kind of hit to your emotions can cause a break in your heart and force you to detach from your emotions and destroy the tapes that replay in your mind and just “move on” and call it a “bruise”. A parent left the household when you were younger and you harbored the feelings whether it happened because of you or not thinking, “I’ll get over it. it’s not that bad…”

No matter how many times people may point out our shortcomings we eventually get tired of seeing the deformities in our lives. These deformities can show up in various patterns and cycles that we go through. They can also show up when we feel we are hitting various glass ceilings; getting frustrated with the lack of progression can drive us to depression, feeling a great deal of failure and self-loathing.

We would pray prayers like “I don’t want to be like this anymore” and “Lord fix it…do it for me…change me.” A way that He will fix it is to go back into the broken places in our hearts, mind, and emotions that healed the wrong way and allow Him to break our old mindsets in order for us to be mended so that we can really have our mind’s transformed (Rom 12:2). He will not pour new wine in old wineskins (Mark 2:22). It will hurt only a little while but the reward of allowing the Lord to be in control of your breaking will be exceedingly and abundantly above all that you can ever ask or think. In 1 Peter 5:10 it says, “But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered awhile, make you perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you.”

We have to settle down and actually embrace the healing process. This will be the experience that reminds us in other seasons that if the Lord kept me there then He’ll be able to keep me here. These are the altar experiences that build our faith!

I have learned this, as well, when I prayed during one of the biggest heartbreaks (at the time) of my life and asked why does this seem to hurt so deeply when I have been through this before? The answer that the Lord gave me made my sorrowful tears turn into tears of praise and gratefulness:

“You prayed that I mend your broken heart. The only way that I can mend your heart and your thoughts towards it is to break it again and allow you to see how I can heal this area of your heart, your mind and your emotions much greater than your power and ability. Although it hurts right now … if you trust Me and continue to give Meyour hurts you will see what MY heart is towards the matter.”

What’s beautiful about the entire process, is once a bone has been broken and it is healed (properly) will be twice as hard to break again. The bonds in the bone are stronger in the structure of the bone! When the Lord heals your heart the experiences that broke it before will not be able to break so easily the same way! Why? Now, you are STRONGER than before!

Examine your heart, character, emotional guards and see what can be a deformity that may have been pointed out to you by the Lord during your prayer time or some things people may have pointed out to you. Have there been patterns and cycles that seem to keep coming around and you seriously feel like you keep hitting a glass ceiling and just need a breakthrough?

Ask yourself: Is this a bone that was broken and mended wrong that needs to be reset and healed?

Maybe you are reading this post and you are in the middle of the process where your heart, mind and emotions are being reset; do not be discouraged or weary in well doing.

Due season will arrive when your mind catches up with the fact that God is One who is a promise keeper and a true mender of any type of brokenness that you feel at this present time. Keep declaring over yourself that you will be made perfect, you will be established and you will be settled. NO ONE WILL BE ABLE TO TELL YOU ANYTHING!!

THE DOCTOR KNOWS BEST!

~Tracy J