Broken

As some of you know, I've been traveling the last few days, to conferences and retreats, for work, and I haven't had much time to post. In these last few days my mother called and left a voicemail for me. I could hear the anger and hysteria on the edges of her voice. Panic creeps into my life, anxiety drips from my pores and I taste fear and feel my heart constrict, blood moving like hot lava through my veins.

My brother contacts me...pushes me to call her...make things better, make it all alright again. But I can't...because I will no longer placate her. I am an adult. And so I find myself in the Book of Job:

Job 17: 1-2 ~ My spirit is broken, my lamp of life extinguished; my burial is at hand. I am indeed mocked, and, as their provocation mounts, my eyes grow dim.

I feel this pain so much tonight. It's overwhelming sometimes. Do you feel broken? How do you find the strength to pull yourself together again, or to have others help you? What strategies do you use to move beyond broken to find peace and serenity?

I find that I must stop - I must put my life on pause to write, reflect, and find my friends and wife. To talk with them, so they can listen and know that what I need is to find a pathway out as I hold on to their arms, not for them to carve a path for me.

Regardless of our faith, or belief in God, we all do feel broken, and we all have the need to be whole again. What makes you whole?

Peace and love,
Charley