Broken Hips and Grapes
I told a friend the other day that I felt like a grape. Crushed and waiting for the wine to be made. But waiting. There wasn’t wine, yet.
In brokenness, there is abundance that comes out of it. But we have to allow ourselves to be broken before we catch glimpses of the abundance that follows.
A prayer I have often is: “Break me, so that you can fill me.” As humans, we don’t want the pain that comes with brokenness. We wish we could have the abundance without the pain that comes from being broken. But being broken means more.
I wrote this poem a few years back, talking about broken hips but full of abundance.
Broken bones
Wrestling with the unseen,
fighting to know the one who sees me.
Break my hip,
break my bones.
I’ve heard it said,
that abundance comes
from brokenness.
So, I wait,
for the snap of a bone,
the crack of my pride.
Break my hip,
break my bones.
This poem came out of a season of sitting with the Lord. Together we pored over the story of Jacob and how he fought with the Lord to be blessed. I was broken and angry with the Lord, it felt like a continuous battle between the two of us. But through this, I learned I had to be broken before the abundance could come, before the blessing could come. Before the renaming could come, I had to be broken.
I don’t know where you are, but I want this to come as an encouragement to you if you feel like the crushed grape with no wine leaking out yet. Because I’m there, and I get where you are. When you feel as though there is nothing good that can come out of this place of brokenness, I’m here to tell you there is good that will come. The abundance will come, the wine will come. It might come in waves; it might come in moments you only realize after they are gone. But the abundance will come. The brokenness needs to come first, before the abundance can come.
If you are in a season of waiting, keep waiting. I know that’s not what anyone wants to hear when in a season of needing answers but keep waiting. You are not waiting in vain, you are waiting for the grapes to be crushed and the wine to be poured. You are waiting for something outside of yourself, and there’s so much to be found in this season of waiting.
Why does it hurt so much? Your hands clasp the edges of your sweater and the tears leak out of the corner of your eyes. It hurts because there has to be brokenness before the abundance can fill these cracks. It will come, the abundance. But we have to be broken, so that there is more room for abundance to come. For you will be known not as one who was broken, but as one that is full of abundance.
