Yeah, so we have Julia Rose Zwain here with us today. Great to have you, Julia. You've always loved the written word. And then you you went you became an English major, graduated with an English degree, and became a teacher. Yes. And you wrote a book, All Things Broken and Beautiful. And today we're going to talk about it. How long did it take to write the book?
SPEAKER_04A few years, actually, because it's a compilation. So I just would write on the spot and then add it to a document. And I've just been compiling it for a while.
SPEAKER_03I have a question for you. Yeah. Why on despair?
I think that because that's where the Lord has met me the most, is in my despair. And that's where I've come to know my father and see his goodness is in the pit and is in the darkness. Is and that's why my book is titled That All Things Broken and Beautiful, because that's when I've had the sweetest moments with the Lord, is when I've been in those broken times.
SPEAKER_03That's awesome. I can, I can, I pick that up as I read it. Like as I was reading, and I saw moments of confession, moments of desperation, but ultimately I saw a poet like holding on to the goodness and the promises of God. So it was really, it's a book about despair that's incredibly encouraging and beautiful.
SPEAKER_01It's reflective of King David, isn't it? You know, that I mean all the things that he had gone through.
SPEAKER_00Tosa said
before God uses a man, God breaks a man. And I remember I was utterly broken probably about 40 years ago, just destroyed, but I couldn't have a meal with my family for a year. Couldn't look them in the eye, couldn't stand the traumatic feeling of having me with my meal with my family. And yet I had to keep itinerating and speaking, and I'd end up behind some curtain, lying on the ground, just pleading with God to help me speak because I was so broken. And it really comes back to a stallion. If you've got a stallion, a wild horse, it's useless to man. It's beautiful, but it's useless to man. Its spirit must be broken. And once that spirit is broken, and when you watch a horse get broken, it's just amazing. They are barking and jumping, and suddenly it just goes quiet. And they put a harness on it and say, Go to the left, go to the right, and it does what it's told. And that's what God wants: a broken spirit, a contrite heart. So that when he says, turn to the left, you go to the left. When he sent when he says turn to the right, you go to the right because you've got a broken spirit. And it's painful to have that saddle put on you. It really is at first.
SPEAKER_04I was in this space of mind where anything good that would come into my life, I would just sabotage it and think, why would anything, why could anything good come out of this? I
I'm just like almost preparing myself for like the shoot-a-drop. And um, and that's a big struggle of mine is to, like I said, like mar the vibrancy of what's there. I do that so often because I'm so afraid of pain and I'm so afraid of something that might go wrong. And just knowing that he's a good father and he gives good gifts and he doesn't trick us and play games with us. And if we do go through the fire and the trial, it it's he's still good either way. And so there isn't any reason to be afraid or any reason to to jump to dive into that despair, even though it was almost like, and I have another poem actually along those lines of like darkness was almost a comfort to me because I I thought that if I hid in the darkness, how much darker can it get than that? You know, I wrote that poem in high school, but honestly, a lot of my poetry stems from that because when I go to the hiding place, when I go to God who is my hiding place, I can lament to him, but I know that my all my feelings and all my emotions, if I keep my eyes fixed on Christ, that they will collapse into the arms of truth and I will find hope at the end of that.
SPEAKER_02Amen. We're moved by things like this when we can relate to them. And I think that is the power of this book, you know, it's that um people will be able to insert themselves in there. You know, one of the young ladies here at the ministry who helped to proof the book basically said to me, Um, how does she know me? I've never met her, you know, and and I I feel the same way with so many of these poems in here, you know. And but yet there's some there's there's so much consolation and comfort in just even if an answer isn't given per se, knowing someone else understands. Like I'm not alone in this. Yeah, you know. So, you know, and and Mark, I'd I'd love you to to touch on this, you know, Psalm 34, 18, the Lord is near to those who are brokenhearted, and save such as have a contrite spirit. I mean, the Lord is near.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we think we we we think of God as as distant because we we see space, we we see the universe and the planets, and and we don't know what's out there. And I think that there's that there's a a correlation to that. That that God is so big and maybe so busy uh orchestrating the the orbit that he can't orchestrate my thoughts because I don't even know my thoughts. Yeah, you know. Um, you
know, I I've often said that he knows our thoughts from afar, but he also knows our far-off thoughts. When we don't know what we're going through, when I can't put into words, when I I don't express myself through poetry, that my my tears themselves become poetry, and and God catches that, and that as a child of God, that I am his poema, the expression of his heart, the symphony of his praise, the trophy of his grace on display that one day will judge angels. And none of it makes sense to me because I think I'm just making a decision. I'm just reaching out, I'm just leaving my family in worship and a family devotion. I'm loving on my wife and I'm kissing my daughter on her head as I'm leaving, and I'm just living life. But it's those weird, mundane things that I think that nothing is happening when in reality everything is happening. That all that the Lord is doing behind the scenes is react is the reality of how God works. He was a man of sorrows. There's a whole book called Lamentations, where he understands our rising up, he understands our sitting down. Not that he just sees it, but he dissects it, that he is not just the author and the creator of man, but he is the artist. He has painted us every freckle, every mole, every hair is numbered, that we are the masterpiece of God on display forever. This is what it means. And this is why I'm so intrigued that I love poetry, but nobody's ever read my poetry. I write poetry, but I send it off to him on a helium balloon. And that everybody that I would even talk to would think that that is the craziest thing in the world. But it's me dancing before the Lord in my ephod. It's me going before the Lord and just saying, Lord, this is my heart, this is my chest, this is my bean, this is what I have. And I don't want anybody else to know this. I write songs, but I don't let anybody hear those songs. That it is for the Lord. This is what I do. And I can't imagine what you have, you know, before the Lord if you're giving us this to be on display. But our hearts are on display before the Lord at all times. And if we were to recognize and realize that he's a very present help in time of need, that in his presence is fullness of joy, that all of his waves they billow over me, you know, is that that I understand that. I understand that idea of that the waves and the weariness and where I want to give up and I want to I want to shout and I've screamed until I've had no more tears left inside my eyes. Welcome to life. This is life. This is just this is just walking with God. Walking with God and and he's there and he's not gonna put out that smoldering wick. He's he's not ever going to look the other way, he's never gonna be blinking because he'll be taking his eyes off of me.
SPEAKER_03You know, it reminds me of Makato Fuchimura, wrote a book called Art and Faith, and in it he talks about Jesus crying over the death of Lazarus, and he talks about the absurdity of it because often we think to ourselves, well, God is the soft sovereign God who knows all things, not surprised by anything at all. And he says the significance of Jesus allowing us to see that moment. And he wasn't doing it on display for us to go, oh look, Jesus Christ. Like he was actually weeping. Uh, you mentioned, you know, he's he's a man of sorrows. And um Makato points out that the tears that dropped from his eyes are still with us. The molecules that made up the tears of those eyes are still with us today, roaming around this world somewhere. Isn't that amazing to think about crazy thought? Isn't that oh yeah? And so I mean we we do, we, we, we pray, we lament, we cry out to a God who has cried. Isn't that beautiful? That's amazing.
SPEAKER_01We cry out to a God who cried.
SPEAKER_02Right? Uh 2 Corinthians 12, 9 to 10. And he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities and reproaches and needs and persecutions and distresses for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, then I am strong.
That so ministered to me when I was going through that time of brokenness, which lasted for five years. It was agoraphobia. I'm so pleased I was able to find out what it was to diagnose the disease. Because I didn't know what was happening to me. I thought I'm losing my mind. I cannot look into the eyes of my four-year-old daughter. I was so devastated and broken, I found it was agoraphobia, which is a fear of the marketplace. I used to preach in the marketplace every day. And you know, I was that was called a fear of the marketplace, and it's um panic attacks. And they were so real, in the sense that I would lie in bed in the morning and break out into a sweat before I got out of bed with irrational fear. At the same time, scripture was such a tonic to me. That verse that you read, my grace is sufficient. God's bringing me to a point of absolute weakness. Yeah. Because when I'm weak, then I'm strong. When when my knees tremble, then I fall to them. We're able to give comfort to others by the comfort wherewith we are comforted by God.
SPEAKER_02Amen. That's right. Yeah. And when you think of Paul the Apostle, where he talked about even despairing of life. This is an apostle. Like he encountered the Christ, he went to the third heaven. What are you talking about? Again, like Paul said, that as Christ did, right, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. Yeah. And we know that joy that awaits us in eternity. And and all that God can and will do through us to touch others' lives. Like, even like you said, like sometimes our sadness, I believe, always with gracious respite in some way as God meets with us. It may last a lifetime. Yeah. But in eternity, when we look back and we see the the things that God did in us and through us to touch others, would we say at that point, no, I wish I didn't go through any of that sadness? No. We'd realize it was worth it because he's worth it. Right. Thank you for tuning in to this week's highlights from the Living Waters podcast. Friends, we value your time. So we've created a bite-sized version of our podcast for listeners who want to get equipped without the jokes and fellowship. Be sure to check out the full episode every Thursday where we dive deeper into the topic. Until then, you can watch the full podcast episode available now on livingwaters.tv.