Why We Don’t Like to Admit Our Sin One to Another

“Finally, I accepted my brokenness. I had never come to terms with that. Let me explain. I knew I was broken. I knew I was a sinner. I knew I continually disappointed God, but I could never accept that part of me. It was a part of me that embarrassed me. I continually felt the need to apologize, to run from my weaknesses, to deny who I was and concentrate on what I should be. I was broken, yes, but I was continually trying never to be broken again—or at least to get to the place where I was seldom broken” —Mike Yaconelli

I am a work in progress. I still fail. I yell at my kids. I am unloving to my husband. I lose sight of what really matters. I feel jealousy and fight selfishness.

“Brokenness is an ongoing, lifelong reality. It isn’t something you get past. …True brokenness depends on seeing not only our visible selfishness, but also our disguised self-centeredness. The bottom layer of ice is melted only by the heat of brokenness … when we see our self-centeredness and hate it.” —Larry Crabb, Soul Talk: Speaking With Power Into the Lives of Others

I know for some people, it is not easy to embrace the idea of brokenness. It feels so personal, so broken! And thinking of ourselves as broken might seem like a terrible thing to do. But when I look at my reality before God, I find great beauty in my brokenness, because this amazingly loving God sees me as beautiful, and He finds joy in me, and He cherishes me, and He still uses me, despite it all. This is indeed the great beauty that surrounds my life!

Brennan Manning, in his book Abba’s Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging

“This [brokenness] is what needs to be accepted. Unfortunately, this is what we tend to reject. This painful vulnerability is the characteristic feature of our humanity that most needs to be embraced in order to restore our human condition in a healed state.

“I came to see that it was in my brokenness, in my powerlessness, in my weakness that Jesus was made strong. It was in the acceptance of my lack of faith that God could give me faith. It was in the embracing of my brokenness that I could identify with others’ pain, not relieve it.

“The self-acceptance that flows from embracing my core identity as Abba’s child enables me to encounter my utter brokenness with uncompromising honesty and complete abandon to the mercy of God. As my friend Sister Barbara Fiand said, ‘Wholeness is brokenness owned and thereby healed.'”

It is about being vulnerable, about being authentic. This is why I write. My message is the message about a loving and amazing God that loves us passionately, a God that is ever present, ever moving in our lives—a God who sacrificed His Son so that we can do life with Him on this earth and so that we can have eternal life. This is it. This is my story!

Life is messy and it’s beautiful, and I want to share honestly and authentically with you. I want to be vulnerable because we need each other. None of us are meant to do life alone. God is a God of relationship, and He created us to be relational too. We need each other. We need to create a healing community, where it is OK to be as you are—where it is OK to be broken.