A HOPEFUL HEART â—½ YOU
Blessed in Brokenness
By Christina Oberon
photo courtesy of Doug Gephardt
Would you agree that it’s hard, perhaps even impossible, to feel blessed while feeling broken? Brokenness has a weight to it, a heaviness that presses down on the soul. It's how I have felt lately, coping with grief. It’s the shattering of our expectations, the fragments of plans that once seemed solid, lying jagged on the ground. In such moments, the word “blessed” can feel like a cruel paradox, a phrase reserved for someone else’s highlight reel, far removed from the raw ache of our own reality.
Yet, what if the cracks in our lives are not merely wounds to be mourned but invitations to discover a blessing deeper than surface joy? What if brokenness is not the absence of wholeness, but the fertile soil where grace grows? These are the deep spaces I have been exploring, lately.
Brokenness has a peculiar way of forcing us to see what truly matters. When life is smooth and the path clear, it’s easy to take things for granted, like our relationships, health, even the beauty of a sunrise. These become background noise in our busy lives. But when brokenness strikes, it strips away the unnecessary, leaving us with bare essentials: love, hope, and the quiet strength to keep going. In the emptiness, we discover a sacred kind of fullness.
Consider the image of a broken vase. At first glance, it seems ruined, its purpose lost. But if you hold it up to the light, you might notice something extraordinary; light spilling through the cracks, dancing on the walls in ways it never could have if the vase remained whole. The very thing that seemed to rob it of its beauty transforms it into something luminous.
So it is with us. Brokenness opens us to light we couldn’t otherwise hold. It humbles us, reminding us of our humanity, our dependence on others, and the fragility of the lives we build. It’s in these moments; when we’re forced to let go of control and face the unknown, that blessings often whisper their way in. A kind word from a friend, a sunrise after a sleepless night, or the realization that even in despair, we are not alone.
And there’s a quiet power in brokenness. It softens the heart, making room for empathy. The cracks in your story become bridges to another’s pain. What once felt like a wound can transform into a wellspring of compassion, one day enabling you to offer hope to someone walking a similar path.
It’s not that brokenness is easy or that we must romanticize suffering. There’s nothing inherently beautiful about pain. But the beauty lies in what pain can teach us if we let it; about resilience, about grace, about the strength that comes from surrendering to something greater than ourselves.
To be blessed in brokenness is to realize that the breaking is not the end. It’s the beginning of something new, a deeper understanding of ourselves. The pieces may never fit together quite as they were, but maybe they were never meant to. Perhaps the cracks aren’t flaws but the places where blessings leak through.
So, would you agree that brokenness can hold blessings after all? Maybe not at first. Maybe not easily. Maybe I can't quite see it, yet. But if I hold it up to the light, I just might find it there, glimmering, unexpected, and real.