Humbly Broken

The decision to reach out and ask for help is really hard. Starting counseling and telling someone all of the stuff you wish you didn’t think, do, or go through is even harder. Harder than that is seeing that you are part of the problem, and you need to change. The decision to start counseling is brave and even braver is the decision to stay in counseling when it gets hard and you have to reach the place where you are humbly broken. 

Here is a little secret- your counselor is broken too, just like all of the people around you. None of us have life figured out. Not only do we not have life figured out we have some of the same hurts, fears, and pain that you do. The best thing I can do for you is tell you that you are broken and that you can get better. 

But this is hard to hear. 

It’s even harder to live. 

The counseling process works best when you can come to a place of humility and see that truly, you have brokenness. You may not have caused it but you are still responsible for what it makes you like as a person, friend, parent, spouse, or employee. It is so hard to step back and see the truth about yourself. Pride will keep us from knowing the truth about ourselves, from healing our deep wounds and from acknowledging those places that need healing and attention. 

Humility is all about knowing you aren’t perfect, others aren’t either and there are places in your life you’re broken, just plain wrong, and stubborn. This may not be a Webster’s definition but it’s the one that will get you the most progress in counseling. Humility says I don’t know it all, I’m not always right and I want to hear from someone who cares enough to tell me the truth. 

Once you’ve arrived at humbly broken the real work can begin of putting those pieces back together the way God wanted them to be. Left to our own devices the pieces don’t always fit back together the same and sometimes the original function and intention may be lost. Just like physical wounds that heal with scar tissue the look is not the same, some of the softness, flexibility, and continuity is lost. The scar stands out from the unharmed skin; it is visibly different. But, scar tissue can be worked, broken down, and re-formed. 

 I am inviting you to be humbly broken, drop the pride, show the scar, start to heal.