We are surrounded by broken people. And, oh yeah, we don’t always get it right either, do we? The heartache of watching others struggle and go a way you wish they wouldn’t feels like it will rip you apart. You see, as much as we love other people, we can’t choose for them. We also can’t be God in their lives, and decide what is and isn’t ok for them to experience. This is especially tough when I think about my kids. My children are still pretty little, and I think about the teenage years with great trepidation. I have worked with lots of adolescents, watching them make what look like huge mistakes and go the opposite direction I had hoped for them.
But here’s the thing—they were never abandoned by the Lover of their soul! There was no point at which God threw up His hands and decided they had finally gone past the point of His love. As much as it hurts to watch someone make decisions that will hurt them, we know they are never, ever without hope.
So, what are we to do while we watch our loved ones go ways we wished they wouldn’t? We are to welcome Jesus into the mess, both ours and theirs. We come to Him and recognize that He is putting them in the best place to know Him every day. That He is weaving all the pieces of their lives together to allow them to know Him if they so choose. It is amazing how your prayer life explodes as you come to Him over and over again about a loved one.
And we love them. Jesus’ love comes bursting out of us to them all over the place as we admit our weakness and our need for Him. This isn’t a place where we have to be perfect to show them how great our God is, but rather a place where in our vulnerability and lack, they can see an amazing God who loves even the most broken of us. Persevere in allowing Jesus to love those around you through your broken pieces.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. 2 Corinthians 2:3-7