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Refreshed to be Broken

An appropriate reflection on 2013 written on December 2, 2013:

In the last year, I have learned a lot about making difficult but ethical, professional, and necessary decisions. I have been challenged to find a place for the pockets of compassion, empathy, and love in my heart amidst the "business" of ministry at the administrative level. I have been concerned that I would "lose" a part of who I was amidst the "growth" into someone equipped to handle even more complex and complicated matters and make the hard calls that are not comfortable for anyone. I guess you could say a year of lessons in leadership in a whole new way for me as I stepped into the leadership team at the children's home I work for where I now both supervise employees and manage youth's cases. And as I've worried about losing my heart while growing in functionality, I was refreshed today in the saddest of ways to find that my heart was still capable of breaking. In half. And shattering to pieces. Because I want to care that much, and the day that I don't, I am not sure I will be in the right place anymore. And today I realized how in different ways, even unrecognizable to me, I had been learning to love. In new ways, I had even been learning how to empathize. In new spheres, I had been learning how ministry looks and feels different in various positions and roles, but it's ministry all the same if your moments are given to God and your life is in His hands. There have been many moments this last year in this new role that I did not give to God, and I tried to self-sufficiently discover new avenues on my own. However, I have learned so much as I have reflected today in this shattering process what I have been capable of learning and doing when I did submit and give in to God. It's in the broken moments where shattered pieces are laying in an unfair and illogical arrangement all around me that I am drawn closest to Christ and am found on my knees pleading for His grace, His love, and His wise intervention. And so today is why I can say I was refreshed to be broken. And to know that though the channels of God's spirit within me may take different routes as He takes me in new directions and grows me in new ways, in the end, I am still a vessel that can be used when it is empty of itself and ready to be full of what only God knows those around us need.

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