A Whole Lot of Breakin’ Going On

I recently turned on Sirius radio and heard Jerry Lee Lewis sing, “There’s a whole lot of shaking going on.” I thought, “Instead of shaking there’s a whole lot of breaking going on in my life; broken dreams, broken lives, broken families, broken hearts.” But then I thought, “I am a child of God and when God gets involved, breaking leads to abundance!”

I recently read about the Passion of the Christ and I saw a whole lot of breaking going on in His life. His heart broke for us and so did His body. Yet, as Jesus was dying He asked God to forgive the people who put Him on the cross. Forgiveness is awesome for it breaks the yoke that would hold us down, chained to resentment or the anger of the past.

I watched my kids go out and find Easter eggs, and noticed how the eggs had to be broken for the kids to get at the goodies and I determined in my own heart that my brokenness was going to open up a new life for them.

When Jesus died, the temple curtain was torn, allowing us access to God which had been denied. Our brokenness allows us access to God, to each other, to a new life. Your brokenness can lead to a new life for your grandchildren.

When Jesus died there was a great earthquake. The rocks were broken and graves opened representing the shaking of the old covenant of death brought on us when the first Adam broke his covenant with God. We now have a new covenant of grace, available to us from a new Adam named Jesus who was broken for us. The graves opened and the dead were raised revealing that there is life after death. We have the hope of an eternal future and for a new life for us after a family is broken and our dreams have died.

The Centurion, a hardened soldier, witnessed all this; the dark hour, the great earthquake, the open graves, the people coming up out of the graves and walking into the city and his old disbelief was broken. He then believed that Jesus was the son of God. All of the events of spring, new life breaking forth all around us after the death of winter, show us the power of resurrection and we have the opportunity to believe again and to raise our hopes for a better future for our children.

As Grandparents we have a breaking in our lives when our children don’t go the path we dreamed for them. We are broken when we see our grandchildren hurting. Our hearts are broken when we must sacrifice our retirement to reparent. There is a breaking in our lives, our retirement plans, our emotions and our finances, but this breaking leads to a filling of abundance; of sticky little hands filling ours, of laughter filling our homes, of smiling faces filling our life with joy as their faces light up when they see us.

Our brokenness is turned to abundance when we see a generation of safe, healthy and happy children emerge from the ashes of a broken home.

There is now an amazing amount of joy, contentment,and thriving, even in the storms of life, or whatever breakin’ is going on when we trust in the resurrection power.

Love, Debbie

Written by: Debra Susan Bowman, author of The Summer of Paintless Toenails: Losing a Son, Gaining a Grandson