What Does It Mean to Be Broken?

Henri Nouwen is visiting with me again this morning.  We are pondering together what it means to say that we are all broken as human beings.  A reader of yesterday’s blog asked  for more information on what brokenness means.  Our brokenness is a very personal experience.  Many people suffer from physical and mental disabilities, from poverty, homelessness and the lack of basic human needs, but brokenness as Nouwen and I are using it is generally an experience of inner brokenness.  Nouwen writes that it is “a brokenness of the heart.”

Have you known loneliness?  Have you experienced insecurity? Have you experienced disappointment?   Have you been betrayed, ignored, or rejected?  Have you ever felt guilty and ashamed?  Have you ever felt unloved?  Have you ever felt useless, worthless or unappreciated? Have you been frustrated by the way life has tumbled in on you?  Have your dreams evaporated?  Have you lost someone you loved through estrangement or death?  Has your heart been broken?  I would suspect the answer  of every human being is “Yes” to all of these things.  This is our brokenness.  All of these things have and do involve emotional pain, suffering and struggle. Because we respond and react differently makes our individual brokenness unique.  The way you are broken is unique because you have responded and reacted to all that has happened in your life in a different way than I or anybody else.  

Many people see their brokenness as an enemy and refuse to embrace it—and, in fact, live in denial and/or attempt to run away from it.  We ask “Why?”  “Why me?”  “Why now?” Why here?”  We must turn our brokenness (the pain, suffering and agony of a broken heart) into a friend.  This is who we are and this brokenness cannot be denied or ignored.  We need not be afraid because we have company: everyone we know and all those we do not know are broken too.  To be broken is human!  To embrace it, to share it, and to live it is to move toward our fulfillment as human beings.