I was walking around like a zombie, just going through the motions. I was going out of my mind and couldn't concentrate on just about anything. Laying in bed and hiding away from the world, isolating myself, was the only thing I wanted to do. Simple things like getting up to shower, brush my teeth, drink water, eat, they all proved to be a task and a half. I felt like I was at my wits end. My brain had just completely shut down. I forced myself to get up and go to class, I couldn't concentrate, couldn't even tell you the topic of discussion for that class period. I got home in a heap of feeling sorry for myself. I realized I hadn't done my devotional or written in my prayer journal for a couple days so I dragged myself out of bed and over to my desk. The Lord has a real funny way of always giving you exactly what you need at a time when you feel most lost.

My prayer journal's prompt that I was supposed to do 5 days ago fit what I needed today all too perfectly. "What is going on in your life this week?" What I heard was "Tell Him what's hurting your heart, child." I wrote about the things that were troubling me and about how these things had caused me to feel like I was going in a downward spiral. My motivation to do absolutely anything had all left me. But dang it, Lord, I'm so tired of starting over. Give me just a little peace. Send peace, send understanding, send love. But above all else, send more love. My heart aches and I don't want it to anymore.

My devotional reminded me that you are never too broken for Him to use you. This hit hard as I was at a time where I felt broken beyond repair. "Lord," I prayed, "I don't feel beautiful, I feel broken." I opened my eyes and I saw the cover of my devotional. It's a picture of rainbow sprinkles scattered across the cover like someone had knocked over the container and just took a picture. Any other time in my life I would think "what a mess!" but this time I saw how beautiful it was. How the colors seemed to fit so well together and how bright and magnificent they all seemed. I noticed how as your eyes moved further along the page the colors lessened and then stopped and all you had was the white, pure, beautiful background. This was how he's shown me that I am a mess, it's true, but I'm a beautiful mess and the more I move along, the less the mess is and it's replaced by the white background. His light shines through and replaces my mess with the white, pure, and beautiful.

It's okay to be broken, to be a mess, to hurt and be knocked down. I don't yet know what's coming but I'm assured it's something amazing, something that I would not believe, even if I was told.

Habakkuk 1:5