ALREADY BROKEN

It was a good time of life for me. I was in college, almost graduating, singing and performing, and enjoying life. I was also the “single male” among a few young couples, friends with little kids. For some reason, little kids loved me. The times I would go over to a friend’s house or apartment, and their kids were there, they would run to me like puppies. We would, inevitably, spend some time building a fort or I would sit as they showed me various things I needed to see: toys, projects, art, rocks they had found…etc. 

A memory of that golden time was triggered by something I saw on the street last week – the plastic arm of a baby doll, lying on the sidewalk.

One evening, as I sat in the apartment of some friends before we went out to dinner, their girl toddler (the youngest of two, the other being one year older and a boy) wheeled in her pink plastic stroller with what I assumed was her “baby”. She came over to me and I looked inside the stroller.

“Is that your baby?” I asked

“Ummhmm. Her name is Neenee.”

I looked in and was a little surprised to see a dismembered doll. Every bit of her in pieces; torso, arms, legs, and head…as if little Neenee was the victim of some plastic shark. Each of her delicate parts were carefully placed in the stroller, right where it they would, by nature, be. They just weren’t connected to each other. I wasn’t quite sure how to word my question.

“Umm…what…uh…why are her arms and legs (and smiling head!) not on her body?”

“Because Nathan (her brother, currently hitting something with a plastic hammer) keeps hurting her. He breaks her when I’m not looking.”

“Oh,” I said. Then I whispered to her, hoping to once again prove myself to be their favorite non-related uncle, “Would you like me to put her back together?”

She whispered back to me conspiratorially, “No. I broke her all up myself this time.”

Confused, I said, “YOU did?”

“Uh-huh. That way he can’t hurt her any more…he can’t break her, she’s already broken.” 

The Philosophy minor in my head let her words settle in. The young theologian still forming inside me let me know that I should catalogue this moment. Then I simply said, “She’s already broken.”

“Uh-huh. And also, I keep her in here now, with me…and he knows he can’t get past me…and I can beat him up, and I bite.” 

Violence aside, this moment, long forgotten, came back to me in a complete picture when I saw the baby doll arm on the sidewalk last week. I applied the moment, and the lesson, to a few people I know…and to me.

“You can’t break me now. I’m already broken…” 

…reminds me that I am weakest when I hold on to anything that people or circumstance can break. Any time I try to hold myself together, or worse, create false armor, I have only created something else for circumstance and people to break. Better I should let go of the rope before I get to the end of it. 

“You can’t break me now. I’m already broken…” 

…carries strength in the statement, resting in the knowledge that being broken isn’t always a weakness, and Jesus’ healing is almost never about putting things back the way they were. Restoration is always about placing someone in a better place than even before the “hurt”.

“You can’t break me now. I’m already broken…”

…isn’t the entire phrase, nor is it the entire truth. I can only speak for myself but knowing that no one can “break” me is only a piece of the armor. Being broken already might be a “so there!” moment to enemies. But the “mic drop” is that Jesus hasn’t left me there, He stays with me, knowing from the moment I was broken, that He would pick up the pieces and hold on to me. 

 He will stay with me. If any circumstance, any moment, or any person, plans to break me again…they will have to go through Him. 

PHILIPPIANS 1:21 • COLOSSIANS 3:3 • ROMANS 8:35-39