Broken Stories and the Goodness of God

All I know is the broken.

That's all that makes sense to me.

It's not a pleasant thought, but there it is. And along with that thought come the words of the Mumford & Sons song Roll Away Your Stone.

Darkness is a harsh term don’t you think?
And yet it dominates the things I see.

I realize this when I get quiet enough and still enough to look inside my own soul.

I'm realizing it again as I work on writing stories, pushing at new characters to see how they respond, digging deep into backstories to find what makes them how they are. I like writing stories; it helps me understand the real world around me better.

But I don't like what I find as I search for deeper connections, for motives and stories. I knew good characters are broken at points, but they are broken all the way back, and the further I go, the more there is deeply wrong with them.

Because it's what makes sense.

I don't like finding these things about my characters. It's bad enough that they're messy, and that these things fit into the stories -- I wish they didn't -- but that this sort of stuff makes sense in my head. I asked it the other night. Where do these characters come from? Why are they so messed up?

Because you live in a very messed up world, said a friend, or something along those lines.

A world where darkness and brokenness run all the way back, all the way down, to almost the very beginning. And in some ways, past the beginning of my history, of human history, back to Satan's rebellion.

So it makes sense that my characters are haunted by this same radical flawed-ness.

And while brokenness and darkness is all that makes sense to me, all that I know in one sense, I also know that it is not enough and find myself longing for something else so much that tears threaten.

I may know brokenness, know a world dominated by darkness, but I need grace, and I long for a world that is dominated by unfading light.

Mumford & Sons (a very... perplexing... band) offers this line later on in Roll Away Your Stone.

It seems that all my bridges have been burned,
But you say that’s exactly how this grace thing works.

And I wonder: if that is how grace works, do I dare want it?

Do I have an option?

Not really, because hardwired into me, beyond knowing the broken, is the deeper knowledge that things are not the way they are supposed to be. That grace is needed.

I like Lifehouse's song Breathing.

I'm finding my way back to sanity again,
Though I don't really know what I'm going to do when I get there.
Take a breath and hold on tight,
Spin around one more time,
And gracefully fall back to the arms of Grace.

'Cause I am hanging on every word you say and,
Even if you don't want to speak tonight that's alright,
Alright with me.
'Cause I want nothing more than to sit outside Heaven's door and listen to you breathing,
Is where I want to be.
Yeah.
Where I want to be.

I'm looking past the shadows in my mind into the truth and I'm,
Trying to identify the voices in my head.
God which one's you?
Let me feel one more time what it feels like to feel alive,
And break these calluses off of me,
One more time.

'Cause I am hanging on every word you say and,
Even if you don't want to speak tonight that's alright,
Alright with me.
'Cause I want nothing more than to sit outside your door and listen to you breathing,
Is where I want to be.
Yeah.

I don't want a thing from you.
Bet you're tired of me waiting for the scraps to fall off your table to the ground.

'Cause I just want to be here now.

'Cause I am hanging on every word you say and,
Even if you don't want to speak tonight that's alright,
Alright with me.
'Cause I want nothing more than to sit outside Heaven's door and listen to you breathing,
Is where I want to be.
Yeah.

'Cause I am hanging on every word you say and,
Even if you don't want to speak tonight that's alright,
Alright with me.
'Cause I want nothing more than to sit outside Heaven's door and listen to you breathing,
Is where I want to be.
Yeah.
Where I want to be.
Where I want to be....

I'm a beggar at His table, sitting at His door, content just to hear Him breathing.

And instead, He makes a me a daughter and bride. Instead, He speaks to me and promises that all broken will be made new, that undying light will come in the end, and that all manner of thing shall be well.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

~ Julian of Norwich

And so I am all undone with awe and glory, broken in His hands and content with the taste of what is to come.

God is indeed good.