the failure breaking ||

Do you ever read a book by a certain author - and you just know? 

You know that somehow - you don't know how and you don't care to - but somehow, this person must have a soul camera on you at all times. They write as if you dumped out the messy contents of your mind & heart on a piece of white paper, staining it red, black, ugly. 

They write for you, to you. For me, that person is Ann Voskamp. I swear...if I ever had the opportunity to sit down with this goldmine of a human being I'd fall into her arms like an overtired child and just start crying. 

"You get it. You get me. How did you know?"

I read this passage some months ago and I cling to it, I read it over and over. Because if we're honest, who hasn't been the failure Ann speaks of?

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"And I become the failure breaking. I am the woman with secrets she doesn't know how to speak, with sins that are like hidden black mold growing up the side of her soul, who's ached with a silent suffering and felt shattered at the base of her crumbling foundations and knows what it means to be lost, not quite knowing how to rebuild.   

I'm the woman whose machete tongue has torn a strip off her [loved ones'] backsides, the friend who has slapped up cold, guarded walls to protect her heart at the cost of anyone else's heart, the woman who's been more interested in self-preservation than anyone else's situation.  

I'm [the woman]...who can't stop her torrid affair with guilt...who has fallen and broken herself and is desperate for Someone to put her back together again.   

I am the failure breaking - and they hand me the cup of crushed fruit of the vine.   
If I take it, if I drink it, I accept His life.  
And I offer Him mine.  
I am busted and His, and He is broken and given and mine.   

Who has ever loved you to death like this?"
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Her words flow over me like life, like realizing I'm not the only broken woman to ever walk the earth. I'm not the only shattered one. I'm not even the only one on my street, or at work, or in Target, at church.

We're not alone.

I'm not the only one searching, not praying nearly enough, messing up. I'm not the only woman who, some nights, just begs for morning to come so I can see light again (because I sure as hell can't feel it). I'm not the only woman spending money I don't have to try to forget and cover the scars in my life. I'm not the only woman who has had too many drinks in an attempt to numb the pain of an empty womb. I'm not the only woman who has swallowed back my opinions, my side of things at the cost of protecting everyone...but myself. I'm not the only woman lost.

And neither are you.

Jesus loves us - LOVED us...to death. 
Literally. 
I don't deserve His life, I don't deserve His grace, to drink and accept His gift - but without it, what hope do I have? Nothing. I'm an utter failure without it. 

The failure breaking...healing...living.

He loves me to death. He loves you to death.
Now I need to let Him love me to life, 
because 
without 
Him, 
I 
might 
as 
well 
be 
buried 
now.