Dancing with Brokenness
This year I’ve had the opportunity to serve in a leadership role. I’ve been doing this role for several years, and this year I’ve become more prominent.
I thought it would be more of the same, and as it turns out, it is teaching me new life lessons. I’m not opposed to learning them though. I’m pleasantly surprised that I’m learning not only about others—they are teaching me about myself.
As a therapist, people come to me broken, and as a spiritual leader, people can present in the same way: broken in the soul. Yet I don’t see someone in that way at first. I’ve always maintained an effort to see the whole within, and I’m learning that sometimes, to see the whole, you must also understand the broken.
And so, it has been my task to open my eyes to the broken in order to heal it into wholeness.
Some time ago, I wrote a post about one such person. I was thrilled when this person had a huge light go on! I am thrilled to know that the light is slowly becoming brighter with every passing month.
What is it about wholeness that causes us to not see the broken, and the broken to not see wholeness within?
Are we as humans so afraid of our inner selves that we choose to not look at them? Has society sent such a strong message of the correct image we should see in ourselves that most people won’t look at the real image, and when we are forced to see the broken self, it then repulses us? Do we put up a mask in hopes that no one will see the real us? Do we then become fearful of removing the mask we placed on our faces, and hide from ourselves?
Jon said that he was flawed, and worked to correct what nurture had put wrong. He was an example of persistence in healing himself. I learned from him to look inside in ways I hadn’t done before.
I arrive back in my circling to the leadership lessons I’m learning. Maybe it’s because I’ve dwelt in the margins most of my life, and have been mistreated at times. Maybe it’s because I had to grow up in ways that other children weren’t faced with. I did have to sort out what disability meant in an abled family and society. While I’m a happy person, I’m not always positive, and so I was amazed to discover that I naturally see the whole in others. How does that impact everyone I encounter? My attitude might also stem from walking the battlements. What came from doing the work around trauma was peace of mind. What also emerged from this healing was the ability to see the entire person in a clear light. I realize the hole that was deep down can now be understood. The brokenness that is felt, and sometimes seen by the person, and others.
The catch is that we can’t see others in a clear light until we see ourselves in that clear light.
At my almost midway point in this year’s experience, I’m understanding that good leadership is about perspective and being open to the lessons we’ll learn from others, and becoming open to learning ourselves.
We do a dance with our brokenness.
The gift to ourselves is to be able to emerge to heal the brokenness, and to see and feel the release into the healing light. Sometimes the emergence is rapid, and at other times slow and painful. In the end, and with the right vision, we heal. The process is gradual, until one day we wonder about how we got to this new place, and how it is that we find ourselves resting gently on a new shore. We see ourselves new, and feel the wholeness, and ask where did the feeling of brokenness go?
And so it is with lessons. We slowly heal, and with the pain of learning from our errors, we grow. We learn what we can and can’t do. We learn how others are affected when we change. We learn our way into a new understanding, and as we understand, we learn to think it through in new ways, and with new whole insights. Lesson learned.
