TRYING OUTSIDE THE LINES

Open me up and you will see
I’m a gallery of broken hearts
I’m beyond repair, let me be
And give me back my broken parts

Just give me back my pieces
Just give them back to me, please
Just give me back my pieces
And let me hold my broken parts

I just want to be okay, be okay, be okay
I just want to be okay today
I just want to be okay, be okay, be okay
I just want to be okay today

I just want to feel today, feel today, feel today
I just want to feel something today
I just want to know today, know today, know today
Know that maybe I will be okay

—Ingrid Michaelson, Be Okay

I keep seeing on social media posts titled “Voicemail from God”. Or posts that give you a sneak peek of what God and the angels are saying about you. I am very drawn to them, and videos of words from the Holy Spirit. The scenarios that reiterate God is on his way, the restoration will arrive in due time, what God has for me is for me and I can’t screw it up resonate the most deeply, pull hardest at my heart strings.

Because it’s been a long desert season in the wilderness. And I’m tired and thirsty and frustrated and so broken and broke. And I’m ready to just be ok today. If not today, one day soon.

I don’t know what you’re doing with all of my broken parts. At times it feels like they’re being crushed and ground up, or thrown across the floor, but for what I’m not sure. Other days they’re just sitting on the shelf, waiting to be pieced back together into something, anything, really, that’s not this.

How to wait expectantly for repair and restoration when there are days I don’t know that I’m able to wait any longer. How long?

I feel like a little kid whose parent has told them to wait for the bigger, better whatever. With an indefinite time frame. Maybe this is what Natalie Grant meant when she said that the promise was that we’d be held. Over the years, how many legends have told us we don’t always get what we want?

Today, I can say that I’ve been held. As the day before, and the one before that. There actually hasn’t been a moment of angry God chastising whiny daughter who can’t wait. More like girl dad God who reminds me he sees my waiting, most days impatiently, and says again and again that He is still good Father who hasn’t forgotten my hurt or my need. So, in a way, I guess I know that maybe I will be okay.