Two broken pieces don’t make a whole. I’ve been mentally preparing for this post the past few days and then my brother just got engaged and I’ve been on the brink of scrapping this post more than twice. However, it’s time to share something I’m still in the process of learning, but bears sharing. I’ve posted about marriage before, but today gets personal.

Marriage has been placed on a pedestal. For me, marriage has been a means of arriving, a way of attaining a social value and status. Most of all, it has been a way to always have someone around as a reminder of your validation and affirmation. After graduating and two eternity-filled years, I am farther from that goal than I was when I entered college.

What is wrong with me? When you’ve been interested in a few people, you’ve tried out dating in the real world and none of it works out, this question will most likely work its way into your head. To be truthful, I’ve learned the answer is a paradoxical many things but nothing.

So there is something wrong with me. Between my childhood and today, I’ve incurred many hurts and letdowns in life as that’s just the way life is. However, I began internalizing these as a kid and those have brewed and later hurts were internalized in more difficult ways. All that to say, I was more than startled when I realized the other day how messy my heart had become with all this garbage and clutter. If you take an honest look, you’ll see much the same.

But there’s nothing wrong with me. In the sense that this is precisely where God has led your life, yes. The overarching fact is that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with you. Let me say that again, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with you. You are just as God intended and that is a beautiful wreck. The beauty comes from God, the wreck is merely a product of existence in a world of messed up people.

Gluing pieces together that don’t fit. This is what happens when we don’t take the time to become whole once more before trying to fit another person into the equation. We think that if we are half and they are half, together it will equal one. First of all, you are not half a person and second of all, who’s to say your holes and cracks line up to one another? In not becoming whole as one with God, we make a couple really bad assumptions.

I am not whole. I’ve come to acknowledge this fact. I’m even beginning to embrace it. And you? Come, take this bold first step with me. Admit this and you’ll feel a large weight drop from your shoulders. It’s not your job to make yourself whole and it never has been. It is no one else’s but God’s. Let Him guide you on the lovingly painful journey and He will hold your hand throughout. I’m just starting, so let’s go and we can all journey through it together. It was always meant that two pieces don’t make a whole.