broken

Roughly 3 weeks ago, I slipped on the ice while taking my two boys to school. My left foot slipped out from underneath me, and I automatically put my left hand back to break my fall. As I understand it, this resulted in a fracture in my left arm and wrist, with a total of about four break sites. After several hours in the ER, pins were screwed into the bones in my left hand and left arm, and a medieval looking contraption holds everything in place above the skin.

I say this in part as way of explanation and perhaps poor excuse for my absence from the blog world recently. My apologies to those of you who might have been wondering about me.

Part of what strikes me about this experience is that my mind has spent an unusual amount of time thinking about how lame a story all of this is, how much cooler it would be if I had a more exciting or interesting story to offer as to how I broke my arm. My ego would surely be assuaged if all of this had occurred by fighting off a mugger, protecting my family in some heroic way, or even something as mundane as a bar fight.

But no, sadly, I slipped on some ice.

All of this makes me think about the notion of brokenness, of how uncomfortable it makes me (and I daresay most of us) to acknowledge this simple fact. We hide it, we make excuses for it, we act as if it is not there. But the simple, undeniable truth is as plain as the fractures displayed on my x-ray: We are broken, we are humbled, we cannot do everything for ourselves.

Over the years, I have heard many sermons and read many stories about healing, about transformation, about divine acts that cure our brokenness. But at some fundamental level, I'm not certain that this brokenness ever entirely goes away. Perhaps we need it, need to acknowledge our interdependence, need to recognize our limitations. Perhaps growth stems not so much from transcending our humanity at times as it does in accepting it.

Peace to you all.