Show Them Your Brokenness

It’s okay to be broken!  We all have brokenness, but we sometimes create more distress, sadness, and hurt for ourselves trying to hide it.  It’s okay to show others the chinks in our armor.  When we do we will not only help ourselves but may be surprised how we help others around us.  

Let the world know the true you with your light shining through all the broken pieces. 

 “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” Rumi

Transcript

You've got to get it out and the only way to get it out of Good morning, good afternoon. Or good evening, depending on when and where you're tuning in. This is episode 50, two of the blue collar executive podcast. And I am your host, who is called me junior God bless the broken road. You know, many of the best destinations that I've ever been to were via a journey down a broken road, broken isn't always bad. 

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00:00:42

In fact, if we embrace it, we can sometimes grow from it. Let's talk about this. No, it's okay to be broken. We're all broken. My mom used to say, don't be afraid to show your brokenness because everyone's broken. Imagine how much stress and worry we have in our lives, simply because we try to hide the chinks in our armor. All we lather on makeup do up or hair, just perfect. 

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00:01:23

Well, those who have hair, we dressed in press drive, fancy cars, live in houses with mortgages that we have to kill ourselves to afford every month and on and on. See, it's really not the brokenness that holds us back rather it's our attempt to hide it. I'll give you an example of this. Looking back at most of my worry about big meetings, wasn't what I was presenting, but how I would appear presenting it. I would lay awake at night, worrying about what I would say and exactly how I would say it. I've done this many, many times, especially when I had to speak in front of a large crowd, I would script every word and rehearse it for a week. But then if I stumbled on one word or messed up, I would get so embarrassed. 

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00:02:06

And that would literally bother me for another week. I would ponder on it. Oh, why did I say that? Or why did I mess up like that? I should have said this. I look like an idiot. But then one day I was just thinking about moms saying, and I thought, you know what? I'm just going to stop worrying about what others are thinking and give it my best. Now, if you've ever worked with me or for me, you know that I refuse to script a single word of any presentation that I'm given. I just make sure I know what I'm talking about. And I go out there and talk about it because I know that scripting and trying to memorize every word is just going to leave more room for air air that I'm going to dwell on for another week. 

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00:02:46

It's not just how we present ourselves. We all spend way too much time trying to hide our faults. And if we would just drop the facade, we would see that many people have the same faults for some of you in my generation. You may remember the Brady bunch episode when Jan had to get glasses, she was too embarrassed to wear them. So she tried to get by without them and was bumping into walls. She crashed her bicycle and everything else. It sounds silly, but just last week I was at dinner with some clients, okay, I'm going to tell them myself here. Now they were much younger than me. So instead of pulling my old readers out so I could see the dag-gone menu, I just thought I would pretend I could see the words and order a simple salad. 

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00:03:27

As the waiter took my order. I said, I'll just have the burrito salad. He looked confused. And one of my clients said, do you mean the burrito salad? I said, oh yeah, totally two different things. I was much more embarrassed about that than I would have been by just pulling out my dang glasses. I guess you can say I had a Jan moment. God says, when we are weak, he is strong. Now he doesn't mean weak. Like we didn't need our spinach that day. He's saying that anytime we're broken down in any aspect of our lives, broken heart, sick financially. And he wouldn't say it. If he didn't know that every single one of us will have brokenness in our journey. 

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00:04:07

He's just saying lean on me. I got you look at the apostle Paul that poor fellow was blinded, thrown in prison beat many times and just busted up in every aspect. But he said, I take pleasure in my weakness and in my end, salts and hardship and persecutions and troubles because when I am weak, then I am strong. What he's saying is that it is in our brokenness. When we ask God for strength and he gives it to us a hundred percent of the time, we've all been there. There's not a single person on this earth that has never been broken. Thank goodness God loves and Hills the broken. But even he says that we have to bring it to him. 

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00:04:47

Yeah. We can try to hide all of our broken pieces from God too, and say, we'll just try to fix it ourselves. And he'll sit there and watch. And won't intervene until we finally give up and expose our problem and ask him to help. And that's absolutely all we need to do. See we're all seeds of God. And we can't allow our environment to prevent us from being the Oak tree that we can become simply because we're afraid that someone might not accept one of our crooked branches. We are only on this planet to be us, not someone else, not someone that we can pretend to be, but to be us. We, and all of our brokenness that comes with it. I can't tell you how much pressure I unloaded the day that I realized that I could drop the facade and just be me. 

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00:05:32

The real me. I'm just me and all of my broken parts. What you see is what you get now. Not everybody likes me and I've learned that and that's okay. I don't like everyone either. It's so easy to look around at others and feel like that we're lacking, oh, if I was better looking or didn't have this disability, or I had more money, what others have may work for them, but it don't fit. You. Nobody can do you like you. So let's be thankful for all that we have and embrace our brokenness king. David was in a rough spot for many years. He even said, I am a broken vessel, but then he proved that brokenness is not failure. You know, in the us army field manual, it says that other than death, all failure is psychological. 

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00:06:19

Think about that. We can break and not fail. We can be broken and we're not a failure as long as we never give up. So why don't we try so hard to hide it? I'm not talking about a broken arm. We can't hide that, but we can hide a broken heart. And when we do, we convince ourselves that we have failed hiding brokenness while attempting to present the world with our version of a healthy person, just creates more stress on our minds and spirits broken. This feels like we're weak. And we don't like that feeling. It's strength that we admire in others and ourselves. We like feeling strong and it gives us a sense of power. But if we're honest, both brokenness and strengths exist in our authentic selves. 

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00:07:05

Sadly, masking brokenness feels safer. So we do it brokenness. As in our problem, ignoring our, hiding our brokenness as our problem, we're all broken. It's just so much easier to brush on that fake smile. When we go out into the world, there are 8 billion people in this world and friends, I promise you that the makeup jewelry and fancy clothes can never make you an ounce better than any single one of those people. We have to stop thinking that it can and realize that who we are in all of our brokenness is enough. It's exactly who God made us to be. And for the exact purpose that he put us here amongst the 8 billion others. 

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00:07:46

So be humble and grateful for your story. Just the fact that we're chosen and put here is an absolute gift. Even with our broken pieces, we may not know all the why's or how God blesses the broken ones and even uses them as long as they stay true to themselves. Hey, God calls us his masterpiece. Friends. Life is a bumpy road and things are going to break. As we journey down it, the key is just to keep moving. When that happens, we can't pull over and stop or try to cover it up. It's really okay to be broken. Just know that as long as we keep the faith, we can take our brokenness straight back to the manufacturer. You know, we come with a lifetime warranty. 

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00:08:29

Now we may be told to travel a few more miles or maybe even many more miles with our brokenness for reasons that we don't understand, but I assure you that there is a great reason. And if we keep trucking along, there will be a great reward. So again, don't hide your brokenness, let your light shine through it. And you'll be surprised how much pressure it takes off of you and how many others that may help. I bet you're going to find that there's many others hide in the same cracks. Look, we're all in this journey together, all 8 billion plus of us, we all have the same manufacturer. And while he made every single one of us unique, he tells us that we need to help each other along the journey. 

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00:09:10

So if you see someone broke down, give them a lift. Someone's lights, burning a little dim. We'll walk beside them and allow your life to light their path. Also. And most importantly, when you're broke down, don't be afraid to call for a tow. There is one thing that I know for sure if we let our curtains down and help each other, the bumps along this road, won't be so bad and life will be a whole lot smoother. Well, that concludes another episode of the blue collar executive podcast. I hope you found some value in it or at the very least found it entertaining. May God bless your broken road. And thank you so much for listening.