Broken Together and Friends Who Are Family

I am participating in a blog hop with a few other ladies. After reading my post, click on Lori's link at the bottom, and then follow the circle back here. 

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We eat together a lot.  A LOT.

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God has always used music to minister to me. Time and time again I'll do that thing where I will hear a song twelve times, and on that thirteenth time, I'll finally really hear it. This happened a couple days ago with the song "Broken Together" by Casting Crowns. You can listen to it {here}.

If you listen to the whole song, it's obvious it's about a couple who is struggling and at the point where they want to give up. Thankfully, Stephen and I aren't there, and I pray we never will be. 

The chorus, though, is when my ears pricked. 

Maybe you and I were never meant to be complete

Could we just be broken together
If you can bring your shattered dreams and I'll bring mine

Could healing still be spoken and save us

The only way we'll last forever is broken together

I have had a very very comfortable life. Growing up, my family knew love (and we still do), I was good at school, I never went without, I married a handsome dude, and we had beautiful children. I had a comfortable life until last May when we got {Sam's diagnosis}. Now I look back and laugh about issues I dealt with and periods of depression I had in my past. 

Stephen's life hasn't been comfortable. I'm not going to share any details because it's his story, not mine. I really struggled with empathy and patience about some things we have dealt with in our marriage because I just couldn't understand. And then we had Sam. And then we lost Sam.  Losing Sam has really helped me reprioritize and focus on what's important.  Some dude cuts me off in traffic?  No big deal.  The cashier at Walmart takes eleventy billion hours to check me out?  No big deal.  The girls ask to paint and make a mess?  Yes!  The girls ask to go to the park?  Yes! 

We will never be complete without Jesus and we won't be made whole until eternity.  I have never felt that more than now, now that I have one foot on earth and one in heaven.  Everything I do, every picture I take, every day is incomplete because our family is incomplete.  We live in a broken, lost, and incomplete world, and I find myself saying, "Come quickly, Jesus," more and more often.  It's in God's plan that our family will be incomplete until eternity.

When listening to "Broken Together," I also thought about my group of friends who are more like family than friends.

Two years ago the girls at my MOPS table just clicked.  I have never had friends like them before.  We can talk about deep hurts, we can be serious, and we can just be stupid.  We have experienced a lot of great things together, but we have also gone through the death of a marriage, the illness and death of a child, disappointments with our husbands' jobs, and a bunch of other hard stuff together.  They visited us in the hospital and stayed up with me overnight as we were losing Sam. One of the girls is about to move away, and I don't know if my heart can take it.  It was no mistake that the six of us were assigned to the same table that year.  I wouldn't have made it through Sam's hospital stay and I certainly wouldn't be doing as well as I am now without their love and support.

If I'm going to be broken, I am so thankful that I can be broken together with my people.     

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Lori has some great people to do life with, too. Click {here} to read about her Village People.