Praise for The Broken Way

What you need to know about Ann Voskamp: after the stunning success of One Thousand Gifts, she has chosen to decline
the mantle of spiritual guru and instead to become even more
intimately vulnerable. In this book, she helps us slow down,
stop time, and allow gritty faith to penetrate, expose, and bring
the hint of healing to the mess of daily life. For all imperfect
peoplein other words, for all of usshe offers a compassionate and wise way forward to help navigate our broken world.
PHILIP YANCEY, editor-at-large, Christianity Today

In The Broken Way, a deeply personal revelation, Ann Voskamp

leads us on a journey toward embracing and celebrating the brokenness in each of us. The passionate words that pour from her
soul will make you weep and shout hallelujah at the same time.
KAY WARREN, Saddleback Church,

Lake Forest, California

There are only a handful of authors in the whole world who I
try to find and read every last word theyve ever written. Ann
Voskamp is one of those. The Broken Way is no exception, as
Ann does what she does bestarticulating the incredible grace
of Jesus in a profound way that makes all of us go YES! but had
no words for before. This must-read book will give life to any
weary soul.
JEFFERSON BETHKE, New York Times bestselling

author of Jesus > Religion and Its Not What You Think

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Ann Voskamp is convincing that there is nothing broken that

cannot be restored by making the living Christ present. She provides a stunningly fresh treatment of a subject so often littered
with clichs. My favorite phrase is, Fight back the dark with
doxology... doxology can detox the day.
EUGENE H. PETERSON, emeritus professor of

spiritual theology, Regent College, Vancouver, BC

I read The Broken Way with tears streaming down my face,
my spirit crying out, YES, YES, YES, YES! Few authors have
impacted my own life like Ann Voskamp. If we can live out the
truth contained within The Broken Way, I believe we will reach
and impact our generation like never before. So powerful. So
prophetic. So profound. Please read this book.
CHRISTINE CAINE, founder of A21 and Propel Women

The Broken Way is the most honest and beautiful healing balm
for an aching heart. The authenticity and grace from which Ann
Voskamp writes are refreshing and life-giving. This book is a
true gift from God!
LYSA TERKEURST, New York Times bestselling

author and president of Proverbs 31 Ministries

Ann Voskamps skill with words, her tenderness with heartsit
is incomparable. Life can leave us looking for an exit, a window.
Ann has a hand on the curtain. She has a way of releasing light,
just enough to chase shadows and give hope.
MAX LUCADO, pastor and bestselling author

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Most of us want to run away from our brokenness. Ann Voskamp

runs right into it, sharing the shattered pieces of her own life to
help us acknowledge the shards we may be sifting through. Ann
helps us see Gods good purpose in all of it, and how He guides
us, not around the pain, but through it. Beautifully written, The
Broken Way offers a generous measure of hope, filled with Anns
tender honesty and Gods powerful truth.
LIZ CURTIS HIGGS, bestselling author

of Bad Girls of the Bible

In the way only she can, Ann Voskamp invites us to discover
that the whole life begins in our brokenness. Ann knows what
it means to be broken. She knows what it means to have scars.
This isnt her theory; its her heartbeat. Lean in to this book,
and listen for it.
LAUREN CHANDLER, singer/songwriter

and author of Steadfast Love

Ann Voskamp penetrates the soul with words that arrest us, convict us, and compel us to the arms of our Father. Ann Voskamps
come along once in a generation. We best pay attention.
GABE LYONS, author of Good Faith

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A l so by A nn Vosk a m p
One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live
Fully Right Where You Are
One Thousand Gifts: A DVD Study: Five Sessions
One Thousand Gifts Devotional: Reflections
on Finding Everyday Grace
Selections from One Thousand Gifts:
Finding Joy in What Really Matters
The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the
Full Love Story of Christmas
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift: A Family
Celebration of Christmas

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THE
BROK EN
WAY
A Daring Path into the Abundant Life

A NN VOSK A MP

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ZONDERVAN
The Broken Way
Copyright 2016 by Ann Morton Voskamp
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546
ISBN 978-0-310-31858-3 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-310-34927-3 (signature edition)
ISBN 978-0-310-34656-2 (international trade paper edition)
ISBN 978-0-310-31862-0 (audio)
ISBN 978-0-310-31859-0 (epub)
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy
Bible, New International Version, NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by
Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
www.Zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks
registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.
Other Bible translations quoted in this book are listed on page 276, which hereby
becomes a part of this copyright page.
Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this
book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply
an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of
these sites and numbers for the life of this book.
The names and details of many of the individuals depicted here have been
changed to protect anonymity.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic,
mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in
printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Published in association with William K. Jensen Literary Agency, 119 Bampton
Court, Eugene, Oregon 97404.
Cover design: Curt Diepenhorst
Cover photo: Mary Anne Morgan
Interior imagery: PhotoDisc / Siede Preis
Interior design: Kait Lamphere
First Printing August 2016 / Printed in the United States of America

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To Mine... who never gave up on the broken

and to every single one who carries
their own unspoken broken
these pages had to be for you
the tracing of scars.

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Contents
ONE

What to Do with Your One Broken Heart / 11

T WO

Re-Membering Your Broken Pieces / 27

THREE

When You Want to Exchange Your Brokenness / 39

FOU R

How to Break Time in Two / 53

FIVE

Becoming the Gift the World Needsand You Need / 65

SIX

Whats Even Better than a Bucket List / 81

SE VEN

Love Is a Roof for All Our Brokenness / 99

EIGHT

Why Love Is Worth Breaking Your Heart / 113

NINE

The Miracle in Your Pocket That Breaks Stress / 123

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TEN

How to Passionately Love When Your Hearts Breaking / 131

ELE VEN

Breaking into Being Real / 141

T WELVE

Breaking Your Brokenness / 155

THIRTEEN

The Inconvenient Truth No One Tells You / 163

FOU RTEEN

Breaking the Lies in Your Head / 179

FIF TEEN

How to be an Esther and Break a Thousand Gates / 195

SIX TEEN

When It Comes to Wooing God and Healing Wounds / 211

SE VENTEEN

How to Find the Heroes in a Suffering World / 223

EIGHTEEN

Why You Dont Have to Be Afraid to Be Broken / 243

Epilogue / 267
Acknowledgments / 273
Bible Translations Cited / 276
Notes / 277

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One

What to Do with Your

One Broken Heart

The very thing we are afraid of, our brokenness,

is the door to our Fathers heart.
PAUL MILLER

The day I cut up the inner softness of my arm with a shard of

glass, the whole thick weight of hells pressing against my chest.
A mourning dove coos from the top of the lilac tree right
outside the back door. West of the barn, my dad had yanked
the steering wheel of that old International tractor, geared the
engine down, and turned at the end of the field.
And I had stood, out on the back porch, all of sixteen, and
let go of those glass jars. Dozens of them. I stood with broken
glass shattered around my feet. No one could tell me how to
get the dark, the fear, the ache, the hell out of me. No one
could tell me how to find the place where you always felt safe
and secure and held. Kneeling, Id picked up one of the shards,
dragged its sharp edge across my skin, relieved by the red line
slowly seeping up, like you could drain yourself out of pain.
Id try to cut my way through the hurt down to the core of
things. Who doesnt know what its like to smile thinly and
say youre fine when youre not, when youre almost faint with
/11/

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The Broken Way

pain? There isnt one of us not bearing the wounds from our
own bloody battles.
There isnt one of us who isnt cut right from the beginning.
All of us get pushed from safe wombs out into this holy
mess. All of us need someone to catch us and hold us right
from the beginning, and for one sacred moment, every single
one of us is cupped. And then they cut that one thick umbilical cord. You can spend a lifetime feeling pushed out, cut off,
abandonedinexplicably alone.
What in Gods holy name do you do when it feels like youre
broken and cut up, and love has failed, and youve failed, and
you feel like Somebodys love has failed you?
Dad had just kept breaking open the earth, just kept planting wheat seeds, thousands of them. They grew.
The wheat across the fields to the west waits in willing
surrender.
Later, hed cut down the harvest. I never once told him how
I cut. Never once told him how, in that moment when the jars
shatter, when the shimmer of glass slides through your skin,
theres this exhaling moment when you feel the relief of not
hiding anymore. Not acting, not for one more mocking minute
that everything is just bloody fine.
I knelt down and held the shards in my hand and turned the
edges over.
Not one thing in your life is more important than figuring
out how to live in the face of unspoken pain.
It may have been more than two decades since my cutting
throughout my teens, but standing there in the kitchen this
older, more battle weary, more broken woman, looking out
over wheat fields of our own, Im overwhelmed by how my
skins starved again for the cutting, for the breaking edge of
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What to Do with Your One Broken Heart

glass again. How my wrists want to feel that sharp, bleeding

relief and hemorrhage out of all this pain.
And thats the razor edge of things right there: Our oldest
daughter, shes just laid it all out in stark details, how intimately
familiar she is with the very same struggle and strangle of silent
anxiety and lies of unworthiness that Ive spent my entire life
wrestling. I feel a door opening on my very own private nightmare, and Im kinda gaping just to breathe. Keep holding on
to the edge of the counter, keep trying to stand, keep trying
to figure out how to hold on and let go. Feeling the weight
of your failure feels worse than taking a knife to your own
pulpy heart. When you somehow pass your brokenness onto
your own people, why does it hurt in a way physical pain never
could? And for weeks, Ive been falling hard in hidden ways,
in ways I cant even find words to speak out loud, and seen
the depth of my own brokenness in ways I would never have
imagined. Theres this ember thats burning up my throat. The
wheats bending into the wind, moving with the wind. I dont
know the way out of all this.
Ive changed. Lifes changed and Ive changed and five years
ago I didnt know how to love or to feel love, had to count all
the ways, a thousand ways, that God always loves me so I could
even begin to learn how to let myself be lovedand somehow
along the way, brushing up against hurting people and stories
and places, Ive changed into this woman whos embraced a
love so large its broken my heart in a thousand aching places.
Dont we all want to change? What do you do when it feels like
everythings changed? Its a strange thing to find out your heart
can explode with love and suffering and find out theyre kin in
ways we dont care to admit. I dont know the way to put all
these broken pieces back into place. Maybe thats the point?
/13/

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N OT O N E TH ING
I N YOU R LIFE
I S M O R E I M P ORTA NT
T H A N F I G U R I NG O UT
H OW TO L IV E
I N T H E FAC E O F
U N S P OK E N PA IN.

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What to Do with Your One Broken Heart

Maybe this broken way is making something new. He is

making all things new.
So how do you silence the demon-lies that wont stop crawling up the sides of your mind and really believe that? How do
you bind up the slow bleeding of your one broken heart and still
believe wounded warriors win, still believe that there is no remission of sins or the crossing of finish lines without things getting
downright bloody, still believe that scars and wounds and broken
places might become you and become who you are? And maybe
this is how all the brokenhearted misfits finally fit. All I can feel
is this unspoken brokenness splintering through me. What do
you do if youre struggling to remember who you really are?
Im not enough for any of this.
Not enough for anything Im doing, for anything I am facing, for anyone I am facing. Not enough for my life.
Standing here in the kitchen, looking out at the wheat fields,
I dont know there will be this funeral and coffin coming.
That there will be this diagnosis coming that would stick its
face in ours and wed never get to turn away. That even more
desperately broken parenting days were coming. But I know a
mothers labor and delivery never ends, and you have to keep
remembering to breathe.
I couldnt know yet the way to the higher up and deeper in
and that vulnerability would beg me to just break open and let
trust in. Let the abundance of God in.
I just know thatold scars can break open like fresh wounds
and your unspoken broken can start to rip you wide open and
maybe the essence of all the questions is: how in the holy name
of God do you live with your one broken heart?
Cutting the thin whites of my inner arms through my gangly
teen years was this silent scream for bloody answers.
/15/

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The Broken Way

Cora-Beth Martin, shed cut her wrists on the sharp edge of

the paper towel dispenser at the school, rubbing her wrists back
and forth, wild for a way to get away from that old guy rubbing
himself up against her in the locked dark every night.
Ema Winters, shed stopped eating. Maybe if she didnt open
her mouth, the pain wouldnt get in and the ache of everything
would waste away off her bones.
Id sat in some counselors sticky office on a hot June afternoon, twisting this bent-up high school ring round and round
my knuckle, watched her lean forward, her stringy brown hair
falling like a veil, and heard her say point-blank that I showed
all the symptoms of suffering enmeshment and emotional
abuse, the words punching hard up into my diaphragm, and I
can only shake my head. No. No. No. Every breath hurts along
all the gravel roads home. If I dont inhale, that womans words
cant get to me. I park the pickup out by the barn and rummage
through the garbage bin, desperate for a jar.
For the smooth skin of my inner arm.
Dad always said that the day my little sister was killed, the
Terpstras had their John Deere tractor plowing the field right
across from the house, breaking up the earth. Right across from
where wed watched that delivery truck knock her over like some
flimsy pylon and crush her, us standing there like impotent shadows, watching her ebb away. Dad said theyd just kept breaking up
the earth, when his world had stopped dead. He said hed wanted
to break their necks for not stopping and getting off that tractor,
when he could do nothing to save the broken body of his little girl or
find a way out of the brokenness cutting up this world. Sometimes
you can feel the crush of it on your brittle rib cage. Great grief isnt
made to fit inside your body. Its why your heart breaks. If you
havent felt this yet, it may be, God forbid, that someday you will.
/16/

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What to Do with Your One Broken Heart

Theres absolutely no tidy pattern as to who gets pain and

who gets peace. How had I not seen that the brokenness of this
world is so all-encompassing that it encompasses all of us?
The wheat stands behind the orchard, turning itself into
pure gold.
This is the deal we all get: guaranteed suffering. We all get
it. It is coming, unstoppable, like time.
There are graves coming, there is dark coming, there is
heartbreak coming. We are not in control, and we never were.
One moment youre picking up balls of crusty dirty socks
strewn across the bedroom floor, and the next moment youre
picking up the pieces of your one shattered life.
How do you live with your one broken heart?
All the wheat looks like an onyx sea. The trees at the edge
of the field reach up like a lyric scratched across the sky. Its
like that line of Hugos from Les Misrables: There is one
spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one
spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.1
How does the interior of your soul live with broken things,
through broken things?
Jesus died crying.
Jesus died of a broken heart. Those words were still warm
on His cracked lips: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?2 The movement of a life of faith is always toward
answering that singular question. Read the headlines. Read the
obituaries. Read peoples eyes. Isnt the essence of the Christian
life to answer that one, nail-sharp question: God, why in this
busted-up world have You abandoned me?
I can see that question hanging over our farm table, up in
the gable, from that framed canvas of a thousand little broken
squares of color. In the semiabstract painting, theres no tidy
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The Broken Way

pattern, just light and dark bleeding into this subtle suggestion
of Jesus hanging on the cross. Hes hoarse with the begging,
for Himself, for us: God, why have You abandoned me? And
He surfaces in the patches of color, the broken brushstrokes,
the silhouette of Him visible in the chaosChrist entering all
this chaos.
There is the truth: Blessed
lucky
are those who cry.
Blessed are those who are sad, who mourn, who feel the loss
of what they lovebecause they will be held by the One who
loves them. There is a strange and aching happiness only the
hurting knowfor they shall be held.
And, by God, were the hurting beggars begging: Be close to
the brokenhearted. Save the crushed in spirit. Somehow make
suffering turn this evil against itself, so that a greater life rises
from the dark. God, somehow.
I was eighteen, with scars across my wrists, when Id heard
a pastor tell a whole congregation that he had once lived next
to a loony bin. Id looked at the floor when everyone laughed.
They didnt know how I had left my only mama behind the
locked doors of psychiatric wards more than a few times. When
they laughed, I felt the blood drain away from my face, and Id
wanted to stand up and howl, It is not the healthy who need a
doctor, but the sick.3
Id wanted to stand up and beg: When the church isnt for
the suffering and broken, then the church isnt for Christ.
Because Jesus, with His pierced side, is always on the side of the
broken. Jesus always moves into places moved with grief. Jesus
always seeks out where the suffering is, and thats where Jesus
stays. The wound in His side proves that Jesus is always on the
side of the suffering, the wounded, the busted, the broken.
I believed this then and believe it now and Id say I know
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What to Do with Your One Broken Heart

it to be truebut there is more than believingthere is living

what you believe. Do I really?
What I wanted that Sunday when I was eighteen, sitting in
a church of laughter mocking the hurting, was for all the broken to say it together, as one body, to say it for the hurting and
broken and to say it to each other, because there is not even
one of us who hasnt lost something, who doesnt fear something, who doesnt ache with some unspoken pain. I wanted
us to say it to each other until it is the bond of a promise we
cannot break:
The body of Christ doesnt offer you some clichs, but
something to cling toright here in our own scarred hands.
His body doesnt offer some platitudes, but some place for
your painright here in our own offered time.
His body doesnt offer some excuses, but well be an
exampleright here in our bending down and washing your
wounds.
And we are His and He is ours, so we are each others, and
we will never turn away.
But instead Id heard preached what Jesus never had: some
pseudo-good news that if you just pray well, sing well, worship
well, live well, and give lots, well, you get to take home a mind
and body that are well. Thats not how the complex beauty of
life breaks open.
The real Jesus turns to our questions of whywhy this
brokenness, why this darkness?and says, Youre asking the
wrong question. Youre looking for someone to blame. There
is no such cause-effect here.4 This happened so the power of
God could be seen in him.5
Theres brokenness thats not about blame. Theres brokenness that makes a canvas for Gods light. Theres brokenness
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The Broken Way

that makes windows straight into souls. Brokenness happens in

a soul so the power of God can happen in a soul.
Isnt this what Mother Teresa laid out on the table: There is
such terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead...
I do not know how deeper will this trial gohow much pain
and suffering it will bring to me. This does not worry me anymore. I leave this to Him as I leave everything else... Let Him
do with me whatever He wants as He wants for as long as He
wants if my darkness is light to some soul.6
The sky is this fading grey across the fields, emptying across
the rolling hills. But flames of light still catch in the far edge of
the waving wheat, burning up the maples at the fringe of the
woods.
The lit trees dont move in the wind, certain they are safe,
that we are all safe.
I wash and dry the white porcelain pitcher at the sink. That
moment, the edges of me, feel fragile. Not wanting one more
thing to crack. Not wanting to crack one thing more.
Is there a grace that can bury the fear that your faith isnt
big enough and your faults are too many? A grace that washes
your dirty wounds and wounds the devils lies? A grace that
and after youve
embraces you before you prove anything
done everything wrong? A grace that holds you when everything is breaking down and falling apartand whispers that
everything is somehow breaking free and falling together.
I had wanted someone to reach over to me at eighteen, sit in
that church pew next to me, someone to touch my shoulder, to
steady things and say: Shame is a bully but grace is a shield.
You are safe here.
What if the busted and broken hearts could feel theres a
grace that holds us and calls us Beloved and says we belong
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What to Do with Your One Broken Heart

and no brokenness ever has the power to break us away from

being safe? What if we experienced the miracle of grace that
can touch all our wounds?
I wanted to write it on walls and on the arms scarred with
wounds, make it the refrain we sing in the face of the dark
and broken places: No shame. No fear. No hiding. Alls grace.
Its always safe for the suffering here. You can struggle and
you can wrestle and you can hurt and we will be here. Grace
will meet you here; grace, perfect comfort, will always be
served here.
How to remember theres a Doctor in the house who binds
up the brokenhearted,7 a Wounded Healer who uses nails to
buy freedom and crosses to resurrect hope and He never treats
those who hurt on the inside as less than those who hurt on the
outside. How do I remember that: Hearts are broken in ten
thousand ways, for this is a heart-breaking world; and Christ is
good at healing all manner of heart-breaks.8 How do I stand
a thousand nights out on the creaking porch, lean over the pine
rail, and look up: The same hand that unwraps the firmaments
of winging stars wraps liniments around the wounded heart;
the One whose breath births galaxies into being births healing
into the heart of the broken.
I put the porcelain pitcher on the barn board shelf by the
farm table. All of us in a heart-breaking world, we are the
fellowship of the broken like that painting over the table. Over
all of us is the image of the wounded God, the God who breaks
open and bleeds with us.
How do you live with your one broken heart? All I can
think isonly the wounds of God can heal our wounds. This
is the truth, and I feel the rising of it: suffering is healed by
suffering, wounds are healed by wounds. It jars me, shatters
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The Broken Way

my fears into the softness of Him: bad brokenness is healed

by His good brokenness. Bad brokenness is broken by good
brokenness.
What in the world does that even mean? And could I find
out simply by daring to discover itsome new dare.
Like a brokenhearted way to... abundance?

Shalom had come to me sitting there at the sticky farm table,

come with her heart cut out of white paper.
She brought the paper heart and this roll of tape to me and
asks, Will you do it, Mama? I cant make it work. And she
holds out a roll of mangled clear tape.
Im sitting there bent over her brother and his spelling words.
What are you trying to do, sweet? Tape it in half? Tape
it to the wall?
I just want the heart taped to me. Just right here. Shalom
staccatos her finger off her chest.
Her brothers erasing his paper too hard, wearing a hole
right through. Trying to erase everything hed got wrong.
Just tape it right here. Shalom points just above her own
thrumming heart.
And why are we doing this exactly? Im on my knees in
front of her, half smiling, looking up into her face, my thumb
smoothing the tape line of this exposed heart.
I asked the question, even though wed just talked it over
that morning at breakfast, about how we need to give love
to others. So of course, shes trying to put into practice her
mothers half-baked words and Im going to have to tell her this
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What to Do with Your One Broken Heart

is bold and brilliant, making herself into a walking sign of my

little breakfast lecture.
Usually Im the one cupping her face in my hands, but
now shes got me here, kneeling in front of her, so she takes
my face into her hands. And she bends so close I can feel her
breath warm.
We need to tape hearts right to us, Mama. So we always
know. She strokes my cheek. So we always know His loves
around us everywhere.
His loves around us everywhere.
If only we could all wear a heart right across the center of
us so there was always this knowing: God has not forgotten
you. God has not abandoned you. Gods love is around you
everywhere. When you feel in your marrow how youre His
Beloved, you do more than look for signs of His love in the
world, more than have a sign of His love; you actually become
a sign of His love.
Her palms warm on my cheeks, I feel it in one long moment
how we can be held again. I want her to never stop holding me.
Maybe this is what real love feels likea slight breaking of the
heart, and a slight breathless surprise at finding yourself put
back together into a kind of wholeness. Shalom.
Shalom looks down, smooths out her paper heart, white
and larger than life (because isnt love always larger than life,
and isnt that always the point?). And then the inevitable happens, what always happens: the heart breaks, rips right down
the center, just where she tried to smooth everything out. Id
swallowed hard.
How in the world do you live with your one broken heart?
Shalom looks down at hers. I am waiting for her to brim
and overrun.
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The Broken Way

Its all okay. She finds the right first words. She holds the
torn bit of her paper heart out to me. Maybe the love gets in
easier right where the hearts broke open?
I blink at her, replaying the moment.
Maybe the love gets in easier right where the hearts broke
open.
I pull her in close, gently kiss her in the middle of her perfect
little foreheadand off she goes with her one broken heart.
And Id sat there in the wake of her, waking: maybe you can
live a full and beautiful life in spite of the great and terrible
moments that will happen right inside of you. Actuallymaybe
you get to become more abundant because of those moments.
MaybeI dont know how, but somehow?maybe our hearts
are made to be broken. Broken open. Broken free. Maybe the
deepest wounds birth deepest wisdom.
We are made in the image of God. And wasnt Gods heart
made to be broken too? Wounds can be openings to the beauty
in us. And our weaknesses can be a container for Gods glory.
Hannah tasted salty tears of infertility. Elijah howled for
God to take his life. David asked his soul a thousand times why
it was so downcast. God does great things through the greatly
wounded. God sees the broken as the best and He sees the
best in the broken and He calls the wounded to be the world
changers.
Up in the gable hangs the painting of Jesus breaking over
all our brokenness, Jesus bleeding here in our chaos: our bad
brokenness is made whole by His good brokenness.
If I could figure that outlive that outthen could I know
the grace that knows how to live fully, even though youre
brokenhearted?
The Farmer comes in from the barn, leaves a bucket from
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What to Do with Your One Broken Heart

the henhouse at the back door with his boots. I can hear him
washing up at the mudrooms porcelain sink. He steps into the
kitchen. I look up from the dishes. Hes seen it already. The
man can read my eyes better than he reads the skies. Sometimes
all our unspoken broken speaks louder than anything we could
ever say. He reads my slow breaking over the kids lightning-
bolt news and all my not-enoughness that I cant even grope
through the pain to find words for.
He pulls me into himself, enfolds me. And then, into the
quiet, he says it so soft I almost miss it, what I have held on to
more than a thousand times since.
You knoweverything all across this farm says the same
thing, you know that, right? He waits till I let him look me in
the eye, let him look into me and all this fracturing. The seed
breaks to give us the wheat. The soil breaks to give us the crop,
the sky breaks to give us the rain, the wheat breaks to give us
the bread. And the bread breaks to give us the feast. There was
once even an alabaster jar that broke to give Him all the glory.
He looks right through the cracks of me. He smells of the
barn and the dirt and the sky, and hes carrying something of
the maple trees at the edge of the woodscarrying old light.
He says it slowly, like he means it: Never be afraid of being a
broken thing.
I dontI dont even know what that means. I am afraid.
And I think this journey, this way, will not spare any of us. But
maybethis is the way to freedom? Ive got to remember to
just keep breathingkeep believing.
In Christno matter the way, the storm, the storywe
always know the outcome.
Our Saviorsurrounds.
Our futuresecure.
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The Broken Way

Our joy certain.

When we know Christ, we always know how things are
going to goalways for our good and always for His glory.
Somehow Love can lodge light into wounds.
The warming spring sun falls behind him standing at the
kitchen window. All across the field to the east, the wheat
waves like a brazen promise.
Ill take it. Ill take his words like a daring covenant, not
knowing yet whats to come: there is no growth without change,
no change without surrender, no surrender without woundno
abundance without breaking. Wounds are what break open the
soul to plant the seeds of a deeper growth.
My dad had told me this once. For a seed to come fully into
its own, it must become wholly undone. The shell must break
open, its insides must come out, and everything must change. If
you didnt understand what life looks like, you might mistake
it for complete destruction.
I whisper it to the Farmer, one line that unfolds like willing,
cupped hands: Brokenness can make abundance.
And the weight of hell shifts almost imperceptibly to feel
more like the weight of glory, even if Im not quite sure yet if
that greater grace will come.

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Two

Re-Membering Your
Broken Pieces

But, first, remember, remember, remember...

C. S. LEWIS

The day after wed held on to each other in the kitchen, this
Open Me
package came in the mail with three words
Carefullyas if it could be a soul.
I have no idea how this happens. How in the thick of ache you
can be this solid damyet you catch bits of a song on a radio
somewhere or the light falls a certain way across the floor or you
lean the mailbox forward and a package slips right there into your
handand in a moment, the loss of it all breaks you wide open.
Maybe its because we never stop hoping for the best, waiting for the best like it got lost in the mailand then one day
there it is, unexpected and with our name right there on it.
I trace the ink across the top of the packageI dont recognize the handwriting.
The package is largishand way too small for the shoulder-
crushing load of questions about what the bloody point of all
this is. I keep forgetting, me with the chronic soul amnesia.
A mourning dove coos out in the maple to the west of the
kitchen. It calls out bravely, unafraid in its lament.
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The Broken Way

Hurt is a contagion. When one person hurts in a family,

everyone aches. And this is always the choice: pain demands to
be feltor it will demand you feel nothing at all.
I slice the box open. Whatever it is, its wrapped in tissue
paper, a thin swaddling. I lift it from the box and this note falls
to the table. Its from Peru, found in a shop that a friend was
wandering through. She writes it across the embossed notecard: Saw it and thought of you. The tissue paper feels like
mummified dressings wrapped around something old enough
to have the greatest story to tell. What do they saythat the
great stories are the ones you need to hear again, the ones that
call you back to find the wholeness of yourself again?
I unwrap slowly, hoping. There it issomething clay. Red
clay. A base about eight inches long. Painted along its edge to
look like thin bricks. Like a foundation, like the foundation
for a story that might rejoin broken pieces. Unwrap it slowly,
carefullyfull of care for what might be. Thirteen small figures, earthen and primitive, kneel around the perimeter of the
base, and it takes me a moment.
The Last Supper. The Great Story. A bent Jesus kneeling
with His disciples, each of them kneeling before their own
small cup and darkened loaf of bread.
This is the wholeness, right here in my hands, like my beginning and middle and end; this is the great story that defeats
lostness and loneliness, that grows your heart larger. Maybe
even large enough to break wide open.
Theres something left in the box? Pieces roll around. And
then I see the hand.
The hands of the Jesus are snapped right off. The Jesus has
no hands.
I sit down. Jesus hands lie there in front of Him, in front of
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Re-Membering Your Broken Pieces

all the disciples, two hands broken off, lying there palms open
like an invitation.
The jug in front of Him is knocked over. Poured out.
How many times in your life do you get the Last Supper
delivered to your very doorstep? Hadnt this been the story
Id been unpacking for the last five years? Hadnt I just been
searching for an answer to the question of how to live with
your one broken heart? Where is the abundant life? And how
in the world to find it?
And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it
to them...1
I had first read it slowly, years agohow in the original
language gave thanks reads eucharisteo. The root word of
eucharisteo is charis, meaning grace. Jesus took the bread
and saw it as grace and gave thanks.
There was more. Eucharisteo, thanksgiving, also holds the
Greek word chara, meaning joy. Joy. And that was what the
quest for more has always been aboutthat which Augustine
claimed, Without exception... all try their hardest to reach
the same goal, that is, joy.2
Deep chara is found only at the table of the euCHARisteo
the table of thanksgiving.
I had sat there long . . . wondering . . . is it that simple?
Is the height of my chara joy dependent on the depths of my
eucharisteo thanks?
So then as long as thanks was possible, then joy was always
possible. The holy grail of joy was not in some exotic location
or some emotional mountain peak experience. The joy wonder
could be here, in the messy, piercing ache of now. The only
place we need see before we die is this place of seeing God, here
and now.
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THE BROKEN WAY

A Daring Path into the Abundant Life
By Ann Voskamp
New York Times best-selling author Ann Voskamp
sits at the edge of her life and all of her own
unspoken brokenness and asks: What if you really
want to live abundantly before it's too late? What
do you do if you really want to know abundant
wholeness? This is the one begging question thats
behind every single aspect of our lives --- and one
that The Broken Way rises up to explore in the
most unexpected ways.
This one's for the lovers and the sufferers. For
those whose hopes and dreams and love grew so
large it broke their willing hearts. This one's for the
busted ones who are ready to bust free, the ones
ready to break molds, break chains, break
measuring sticks, and break all this bad
brokenness with an unlikely good brokenness. You
could be one of the Beloved who is broken --- and
still lets yourself be loved.

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