WEEKLY MEDITATION
The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.
-Ernest Hemingway
Our addictions often break us. When the emotional patterns that underlie our addictions become powerful enough, they can overwhelm our ability to hold other parts of our lives together and they often fall apart. Addiction can break our health, our finances, our relationships, and really, our hearts. But it is through the very nature of this breaking that the opportunity for healing and recovery exists. If we can learn to track our brokenness, we can find the clues to healing it. If we find the story behind our addictions—if we can successfully tap into what it was that our addictions provided us—however dysfunctionally, we can learn to provide ourselves with these things, functionally. But as today’s quotation suggests, it isn’t guaranteed. Pain doesn’t necessarily lead to gain. There must be a conscious effort to learn from our brokenness—a dedication to honor our addictions as an attempt to find wholeness and connection. If we approach our recovery this way, then our brokenness can be transmuted into strength.
