A Barefoot Life

I was listening to a song on KLove a couple days ago…

This one. I really love

it.

So when I heard it for the hundredth time the other day, I was jammin’ and probably playing the drums on my steering wheel…and I almost missed this line…for some reason its meaning never registered before.

Why don’t you break my heart ’til it moves my hands and feet.

Yikes.

That was a good yikes, but still a yikes.

It got me thinking, though…how there are so many broken people right now.

People I know, people I don’t know…and me.

Yeah, I’m broken.

Truthfully, I’ve been breaking for awhile now, and it kind of just happened through different situations and circumstances…and life.

I suppose everyone breaks once in awhile.

But I don’t look at that brokenness as a negative thing…I see the potential for God doing some awesome things through it.

Then I started thinking about so many amazing people whom God has used because they were broken…not because they were perfect and flawless.

I’m gonna tell you a story. One that, amazingly, I haven’t shared here on the blog yet.

About eight years ago, there was this girl.

She’d been married about a year and was being pressured by people we don’t n ame here to find

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a teaching job. She made a few phone calls, but her current certificate didn’t allow her to teach in the public schools, and so her job search was limited…and looking hopeless.

Until she stumbled on an open teaching position for 4th and 5th grades at a small Baptist school about 3o minutes from her house.

She interviewed and was hired not only to teach those two grades but also to be the volleyball coach.

She was hopeful and optimistic, though she knew her beliefs and standards didn’t quite line up with the school and church, which she’d be required to attend. (They were pretty conservative.) Still she thought there was potential for reaching lives and was excited to begin.

It was a tough year. More hours spent working than you can possibly imagine, including many Friday nights. An administration that was less than supportive and often made her feel inadequate. A big class with some pretty amazing students…but some pretty strong and stubborn personalities, too. Being so wrapped up in school that there was little time left for anything else.

It all came to a big collision sometime in the middle of April.

This girl…Mel…she broke.

She couldn’t do it anymore.

The months she’d spent pouring into these kids lives felt like a waste.

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She didn’t feel welcome at the school or the church. She’d been told by people in power that she was different and that she wasn’t a good fit for the school or the church. She wasn’t eating or sleeping well.

And it was time to go.

And so…go, she did. Without the chance to say goodbye at all.

It was devastating and made her want to turn her back on all she had always said she believed.

I left that school in April, sure that no

school would ever touch me again.

After all, who hires a teacher who quit her previous job a month before the end of the school year?

I was also fairly sure we might never look for another church…because for those first few, raw weeks following the end of this experience, I wasn’t sure I wanted anything to do with Christians.

But what I love about this story was that…to God be the GLORY…it didn’t end on that April night when I packed up my classroom into the wee hours of the morning and left.

Tobin and I took some time to process and search…and heal.

The parent of one of my students in that class called a week or two after everything blew up. She didn’t push, she didn’t make me feel guilty.

She just wanted two things. To listen. And to love.

Theresa became one of my dearest friends. (And her daughter, one of my former students and now my friend, is Maelie’s middle namesake. :))

We went to her church, ABC…and felt like we were home.

We were loved and cared for during our year there…giving us a chance to get our feet underneath ourselves again to prepare for the next adventure.

Indonesia.

I won’t go into being used by God there…because really, He knows it. We don’t know so much.

We know that we were used, but we also know how much people were used in our lives during that time.

And then it was time for the next adventure…here.

On that April night when I thought my teaching career was over…and possibly my faith, too…God took this broken mess and used it.

That’s why the line in that song is so precious to me…and why He is so precious to me.

Because when we break, that’s when He does some mighty things.

Break my heart ’til it moves my hands and feet…