My severed, broken yet beating heart rattles back and forth in my chest. Will the pain ever go away? Will the tiredness with its heavy grip ever release... permanently? Will that ache in my knees looking to the stairways fade? Will the memories of what was choke out the moments of what memories can be made here and now? Was this the specific brokenness I was meant to carry, to share?

The struggle I have in writing this post is because this is an invitation into my brokenness. We are all broken. Lately, however, God has particularly been laying out my brokenness in shared, scattered pieces and making it plain that it was time for me to sit and be still, to sit and enter His presence.

Some of my brokenness rears its ugly head through my health issues. Day by day my health can fluctuate to where I have energy one hour to where I am lying down on the couch the next hour with nauseousness, light-headedness, having no semblance of energy, physical or mental, to want or attempt to do anything, muscle fatigue and spasms in various muscles.

It is a terrifying circle. I don't have a time ticker that tells me when the next wave will hit. And for these past two years, going on three, I have struggled to push through and pretend with the mask of normalcy. I have fought to push through barriers and choose exhaustion over possible weakness. Until this summer, when I have felt all but crippled by these unknown problems.

This isn't a transition where I say that I drew close to God and He healed me and all is well. The day-to-day process continues, but this stage is where I want to invite those who are broken, which, again, we ALL are, into a state of being where I have felt healing, joy and even some comfort. The state of being a giving person. Before you click the blaring red "x" at the top left of your screen or the top right, hear me out. This may be a game changer for you. If not now, maybe someday.

I bought a book two months ago, which if I can count correctly, would be June. I was scrolling through Amazon on the hunt for a new book to dive into now that I had a summer free of kids. (Ha. Side note. I nannied all summer. Go figure).

One of my all-time favorite authors is Ann Voskamp. She wrote her first title One Thousand Gifts a few years ago and it has forever changed the way I think. Her premise was to explore the gift of grace, the ability to thank our Father for His one thousand gifts and more that He gives us. Naturally, I keyed in her name to see if she had produced any more literature. She had, and I couldn't have been MORE excited. I think I squealed a little. Now, I believe books are helpful resources, but she is still not God. With human hands she wrote, and while I admire her greatly, I still profess with a heart full of confidence, and I think she would agree, that the Word of God is the WORD of truth always and forever.

With the search engine poised with her name, I clicked enter and results flew back with her recent release of The Broken Way. At the time, I was just super stoked to have the book in my hands. Nerdy, I know. But God could not have orchestrated the timing any better.

Many of us have heard of the Lord's Supper. It was the night that instituted one of the greatest examples of brokenness; the day where Jesus was well aware His time had come. Jesus Christ took the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it. He asked his disciples to do this in remembrance of Him. In the same way He also took the cup, swirling with the liquid that symbolized His blood, to bless it, to drink it and give it.

Growing up, I partook in the Lord's Supper, knowing in my head what it meant, experiencing the deafening weight of my sin as I thought of the holiness and grandeur of who Jesus is and what He had done and continues to do and give. But Ann's book brought a new aspect of this story to my attention. It is the sequence in which the Lord's Supper occurs. (The account of the Lord's Supper is found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and I Corinthians).

First, Jesus Christ takes the bread and lifts His eyes to heaven to seek the face of His Father, to thank Him, to give the honor and glory that is due His name, to focus on the Author of creation but also to serve as an example of what His disciples were to follow. So, praise and blessing is first.

Second, Jesus Christ takes the bread and breaks it. With crumbs falling, He is not only showing the process of His death, but He reveals that a life of following Him involves this breaking - this brokenness. To take up His cross and follow Him requires me to be a reflection of how He blessed God and was broken no matter what the cost.

Lastly, Jesus Christ takes the broken bread and gives. He sections the portions and with steady hands passes it to the disciples. He gives so that the disciples were able to partake in each part. He gives so that we are able to see that when we are broken we are able to give, because even in Jesus's most broken state, He gave.

Do this in remembrance of me. It wasn't a dare. It was a command.

What does this enlightenment do for you and even for me? For me, it revealed how rarely I remember Christ, ever-present in my brokenness. I don't follow His process. I don't bless the Lord's name. I ask why. I am not willing to be broken because that represents weakness. I don't give because I have been wholly focused on what I can do to fix what is cracked, bruised and battered.

I took the dare to follow His steps, His way.

I clean house for an older lady named Rosemary. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to exert energy I didn't possess. But the steps came back to me, bless, break, give.

In that moment, I thanked the Lord for the ability to be with Rosemary, to love her and to give her company. I thanked Him for the sun that shone and the ability to drive, to clean, to be able to serve.

I was broken in that my body required several breaks. I was broken in that my mind was constantly fighting, not wanting to finish.

But I gave. I gave Rosemary my time, I brought her flowers. They were deep pink, delicate roses that reflected the beauty of who she was and how I cared for her. And the smile, the communion we had was altogether glorious. A miracle amidst the broken, just like Christ when he broke the bread and gave Himself. The resurrection was our miracle, our only way to healing, our only way to experience abundance in Christ.

In the givenness, I was invited into love. Rosemary's smile melted this broken heart, or maybe it was starting to heal it.

I can ask a lot of "why" questions about why I am suffering, why I am so broken. Brokenness is a direct result of sin. But there is a choice.

There is a choice to reflect the heart of Jesus, a heart that blesses, breaks and gives. Because then I experience true love, true communion. It is counter-cultural to what the world and Satan expects and wants me to do, and at times it counters what I want to do.

Today. Today I choose, as Ann Voskamp says, "Be broken and given in a thousand common and uncommon ways. Live given a thousand times a day. Die a thousand little deaths."

And in the words of Jesus Christ, "Do this in continual remembrance of me."

Broken people, bless the Lord, be broken and give.