While Dr. Townsend talks about sexual brokenness, I think that brokenness in general applies here.
It's that feeling that who you are isn't worthy of love or acceptance from others due to some aspect of your personality or issue from your past. What really got me about this video was how he talked about how love and truth go hand in hand, but for the broken person, that person either loves without truth and has people but is inauthentic, or is authentic but alone because of their issues that invalidate them from relationship. Either way, they are alone.
He said that the answer to this is for the broken person to open up in an environment where they will be accepted and loved. That the safe place is where the healing process can happen for the person who is afraid of being alone. Because when you are who you are, when you put yourself out there, you give people the chance to reject you. For me, that thought is terrifying.
This week I am learning about what it means to be real and to do so when it is safe. Rather, I've had to take personal inventory of the relationships in my life and evaluate how much of my "self" I can entrust to them. It's been quite enlightening. When I listed all the people who I can actually be real with, I couldn't even fill one hand. It made me treasure those relationships.
From another angle, as a Christian, I love how he mentions that people are the stewards of God's grace. This means that we as people are agents of His mercy and compassion. That we are to provide that shoulder to cry on, that listening ear to the world-weary. That sometimes, the healing process isn't telling people what to do, but simply embracing them as they are.
I know we are frequently portrayed as hateful and judgmental by the media, but that really isn't who we are. Yes, the God we serve is just, and good, and perfect. But He is also not so distant and proud that he cannot or will not handle the weight of who we are, faults and personal brokenness and all. He cries with us. He suffers with us. And He feels our pain and understands it all.
There's Bible verse that says, "Confess your sins to one another that you may be healed." Yet for many Christians church can be one of the loneliest places, where people cannot be real about who they are for fear of condemnation. Performance has frequently replaced authenticity as we have great music and great preaching, yet we may know nothing nor have any connection with people sitting in the seats around us. As Christians, as the church, as the Body of Christ, we are to be a healing community and a safe harbor for those battered by the seas of life. And we are to be known for our love for one another.
