Blessed Broken Given by Glenn Packiam

Author:Glenn Packiam [Packiam, Glenn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2019-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

7

Confession and Community

On any given Saturday morning, our youngest child used to awaken Holly and me at dawn, holding her stomach in agony and pleading for breakfast. You might think she had been living in a Dickensian orphanage, deprived of bread and water. She may have woken up only ten minutes earlier, but it was at that precise moment that she needed food. Or else she would starve.

Over time, she and her older brother gave up on waiting for us to rouse from our slumber. And so it was that on one such morning, when she was five and he was eight, while my wife and I attempted to sleep in to that luxurious hour of 7:00 a.m., we heard a crash from the kitchen. As I stumbled down the stairs, I found these famished early birds with brooms in their hands, oatmeal on the floor, and shattered white dishware scattered around them.

“What happened?” I asked, probably in a weary, impatient tone.

“We were making oatmeal,” one of them responded, sounding defensive.

The other child provided backup. “Yeah, Dad, we were starving, so we decided to make our own oatmeal.”

They had successfully gotten a bowl down from the cupboard, poured the oatmeal into the bowl, filled the bowl up with water, and placed the bowl in the microwave—all with minimal spillage. But the trick came with removing the hot bowl from the microwave. It was hotter than anticipated and their reflexes were instinctive and instant. Crash! But if they had made it that far without asking for help, then, by golly, they weren’t going to give up now. And so it came to be that in one swift moment, they had squandered oat-meal, smashed a glass bowl, and sacrificed a perfectly good broom.

Surveying the mess, I asked, “Why didn’t you ask me for help to clean it up?”

“Dad, we didn’t want you to know about it,” the five-year-old declared. “We were just going to clean it up on our own.”

My heart melted. I had to admire their determination.

But it was also one of those parenting moments when I realized this was a glimpse into what I do with my Father in heaven. I am the kid who gets tired of waiting for my daily bread, decides to take matters into my own hands, ends up making a big mess of things, and tries to clean up the mess on my own, usually only making it worse. It’s hard enough to ask for help. But it’s even harder when asking for help requires admitting that we’re in a mess of our own making.

Our brokenness requires that we ask for help, that we reach beyond ourselves for what we cannot find within ourselves. And very often, that request for help will require an accompanying admission of guilt.

“I’m sorry. Please help me.”

Talk about pulling down our fences and breaking down our walls. We want to be able to handle it, fix it, and deal with it on our own. This is my life, my story, my mess, we tell ourselves.

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