O God, I am so very thankful for what you have done in my life. I have known the gentle cleansing of my soul, a soul weighed down by the grime of guilt and hardened by the years of trying to hide that guilt. I have known the warmth of Your presence, my own heartbeat wanting to be in sync with Yours. I have heard Your quiet whispers, the assurances, the rebuttals to the lies of Satan, the challenges to respond in godly ways. I have found purpose and direction, replete with a passion both to serve others and to serve You with constancy and fervor. Father, my understanding has been enlarged and fundamental facts resound with applicable meaning. Newness has displaced the old, and yet, precious Father, from deep within my being the jagged barbs of something still broken can threaten the tranquility I long to hold onto. O God, why? I ache with a pleading weariness to cover my broken place with the healing oil of Your grace. Frantic thinking and desperate prayers seem only to accentuate its presence, and its presence gives allowance to a scourge of reactive behaviors and self-satisfying and self-protective reason. The assault of temptation shudders my being with its shame. Why? Father, Father, heal the brokenness! Free me from its ugliness and torment!

 

My child, one lay prostrate before Me millenniums ago and begged for his tormenting thorn to be removed, and countless others have followed his example and lifted their voices with anguished desperation. And each time I have said, "My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness. When you are weak, you will be strong, because in your weakness, the power of Christ can work through you." You have My grace, and it will strengthen you and enable you, but the broken place will still be there. Your broken place does not prohibit your freedom. Freedom allows you to pursue, and learn, and become, and you have traveled far on your path of freedom. Your broken place has its own purpose, woven into the fabric of the purpose and direction you already experience. You would not be who I created you to be, apart from your broken place. You long for a wholeness and a healing that will only be yours when you stand in My eternal presence, unrestrained by earthly memories and consequences, and the fallenness of humanity. There are those who will not understand the broken place that I have allowed, but, My child, in My sovereignty and wisdom, I have known from the eons of time past, that the broken place would be yours. As much as a Father can love, I embrace you with that love, and ask that you would embrace the broken place, and let it be a conduit of grace for still others. When your tranquility is threatened, quiet yourself in the reminders of My love, and rest on My breast of affection. Your broken place is not meant to destroy, but to make you a trophy of My grace, and a reflection of My glory.