“Don’t let it break you, let it make you”
While sitting in a Starbucks, drinking a Vt. Ice Coffee and leisurely scrolling through my twitter, I read this tweet about hard times, ending with the statement “Don’t let it break you, let it make you” And perhaps I’ve heard that a million times and brushed it off as superficial motivation, but not this time. No, in fact, my mind stopped and did a double-take of the tweet, attempting to understand what that really meant “Don’t let it break you, let it make you”
The phrase is simple as can be, still, I haven’t fully adopted it into my understanding of life. The feeling associated with it is similar to when there’s an impossibly easy question on a test and you spend 3x as long on it trying to figure out the ‘catch.’ The good new is, there is no catch, it’s just an incredibly simple piece of encouragement.
A mother-like figure in my life has this phrase she reminds me of every time I go to her for advice, “You are made up of your experiences” To me that goes hand-in-hand with the tweet. Every day we make choices, every day we will we make memories and are further molding who we are to be. Although the average person does not welcome hardship with open arms, we encounter them daily. And even with our resistance, they have molded us into who we are today.
With that said, maybe it’s not as much of allowing our experiences to make us instead of breaking us, it’s whether or not we accept our circumstances and use what we have learned to make ourselves better the next time, or if we choose to soak in self-pity, ignoring the lesson that was to be learned.
Breaking:
Romans 8:35-37 (ESV)
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us
If we have Christ in our life, our breaking will always result in making. No matter the task, trial, or errors we encounter, the turn-around will always exemplify Christ as He intends. With The Creator of everything, he may allow us to break, but we will never be broken beyond repair, and the brokenness will never outweigh the lesson intended to be learned.
Making:
Philippians 1:6 (ESV)
“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”
God is constantly molding, testing, and teaching us, trying to make us more like Him with every lesson. He is making us into who He wants us to be daily. We are works in progress until He “calls us home.”
“Don’t let it break you, let it make you.”
This comes down to mindset. We will be broken and made until the day we die, but if we accept the breaking and choose to harness the hardness of life, we are allowing ourselves to be shaped as God intends.
We want to be the controllers and masters of our own lives, but a life being lived for Jesus is the only life of true fulfillment, and that means a life of lessons. Let the Author of your life draft up copy after copy, knowing with each rewrite we are closer to the final copy.
You’re going to be okay; keep going,
