Mended Damages

Since I was young I have always known this: Life damages us, everyone. We can't escape that damage. But now,  I am also learning this: We can be mended, We mend each other. ~ Allegiant Veronica Roth

The majority of the time, I try to avoid singular quotes from books. I do this because it is always easy to skew a small passage into your own perspective, but this quote, this quote is different. This quote is a major theme in the third novel in the Divergent series by Veronica Roth. Now I will not be going into too much detail about how this is incorporated in the novel, but on the quote as a singular piece.

Since I was young I have always known this: Life damages us, everyone. We can't escape that damage. But now,  I am also learning this: We can be mended, We mend each other. ~ Allegiant Veronica Roth

It would be foolish to think that we can enter into adulthood with absolutely no damage to ourselves, whether it is a physical damage, emotional damage, spiritual damage, etc. I don't think I have met a single person whom I have been able to speak with in depth who has not been damaged in some way shape or form. Being damaged is just part of life.

And to be honest, sometimes the parts that are the most damaged can become the most beautiful things.

See, it is easy to be able to only look at the negative and only seeing the bleakness of your past. Staying in this mindset too long can be suffocating and can cause a person to lose so much hope. But where the real lesson comes to play is the simple concept of being able to be mended.

Choosing to mend is one of the hardest lessons to learn and to accept in my opinion. It's admitting a part of your life has been hurt or having to come to terms with the pain. Mending is uncomfortable, it hurts and causes you to face reality in ways that seems excruciating. But this mending leads to a healed state.

For example, last Fall I was going through a rough patch in my spiritual life. I had not been a part of a Bible Study for over a year at that point and felt like I really didn't have anything to give to these kids that I was leading. I actually shared that with the two guys I was working with at the time and one of them stopped me after our meeting and invited to this Bible Study. To say that this Bible Study changed my life would not be expressing how much it helped me. There was a point in time when I was hurting so much from what was happening to my parents at the church and didn't realize how much I was hurting, that it came out during our study one night. I wept. I was emotionally and spiritually hurting in ways that I could not explain. I was damaged, but since I broke down that night and wept, the mending started happening. Now I can see the people who hurt my parents and not think ill of them, but if it wasn't for that Bible Study or my friend inviting me to it, then I would not have been able to mend.

We have all been damaged in some way, but it is our choice whether we let others help us mend. Life is hard and can hurt in indescribable ways, but even then, we can be mended.