The Story Behind the Poem: Broken

“If she were my horse, I would break her,” my husband said after his first ride on my mustang mare. I had to switch him during our ride to my other horse, because my palomino gelding, though he has less self-control, is more easily controlled. It proved to be a better fit. My gelding is easy to bend to your will but trust has to be earned with my grulla mare.

“I will never break her, ” I informed him. She wasn’t bad. Didn’t buck, didn’t bolt with him, but she still had her will intact and my husband didn’t like that. He wanted, no questions asked, compliance.

I didn’t start out vowing never to break her.

In fact, I wanted her “dead broke,” for me and my kids to ride. But she taught me otherwise. She was not mine to break, but she was willing to enter into a partnership with mutual benefit and mutual give and take.

She was not mine to control and I soon realized I no longer wanted to control her. I wanted her to control herself. My goal changed to her being able to be on the trail without feeling like she was going to die or constantly worrying for her safety. I wanted to be able to put my kids on her and know they would be safe.

I grew up learning that God wanted me to be like a broken horse.

Although it doesn’t have a negative connotation in the horse world or even in society, “broke” horses truly are broken. They are no longer whole.

They have given a part of themselves in the service to man, and they hide the behaviors and reactions they now know are unacceptable. Sounds very human, doesn’t it?

Not all rideable and good saddle horses are broken though. When you have a horse that is full, then you can build a full partnership. It is no longer master and servant, but rather partners.

Is God a master, whose desire it is to control us?

For a long time, I thought the answer was yes.

He commanded. I did–no questions asked. He wanted me broken. I learned it time and time again in various lessons and experiences. I remember a song from a summer youth program about how I should be broken like a broke horse. That’s hard to reconcile when further learning teaches you that the best horse is not broken, but willing and the best relationship is one in which the inferior party is encouraged and uplifted, whose capacity is enhanced not tamped down.

God wants to work with you, to have a relationship and a partnership, but he does not want you broken. Instead, he wants you to feel his love, and he wants to help you with kindness, not cruelty. This does not require you to be broken.

God wants you whole.

He wants you always learning, growing, and improving, but he doesn’t want to beat his children into submission. He does not want you broken.

After a series of events in my life, I truly felt broken. It was not a good feeling. I did not feel God working in my life, nor do I think he was. When I feel God in my life, I don’t feel broken, but at peace. I don’t feel controlled but encouraged.

When I was broken, I was bitter, angry, resentful, and completely closed off. After feeling the pain of brokenness, I simply can’t believe that is what God wants of me. Yes, he wants us to be better, but not by tearing us down. Yes, life will sometimes tear us down. God is the one who stands waiting to lift us back up.

Broken

Broken! That’s how God wants you, that’s what I’ve been taught.

Well, I’m there, this is apparently what God wants.

 

It’s finally where I am and who I have become.

Worthless nothing, no one wants me, so lonesome.

 

He should be so glad, there is nothing left of who I thought I was.

And God must rejoice now, he must be happy because,

 

apparently, he didn’t want the person I thought that I could be.

There is someone else, different but not me that he wants to see.

 

They say God wants my happiness, but how is that right,

if he also wants me broken? To stop and give up the fight?

 

Why would he not want all of me, whole and complete?

Does he ask for my innate being to disappear, to retreat?

 

That is not a God of love, not one I want to know,

I don’t believe that’s really how God would want it to go.

 

Rather to love and care for me, to take me into his arms,

to acknowledge that I have my faults but he wishes me no harm.

 

To me God would want the person that I am

not to sit above me and mercilessly condemn,

 

the child he created and gave to this earth.

He would want me to be loved and held, each day from my birth.

 

Would he really want my destruction and to rejoice in my sorrow?

No, I believe in a God that loves me today, stands ready to help me tomorrow.

 

Yes, God wants who I am, he wants me imperfectly complete,

not broken and torn apart on the day that we meet.

Read here about the power of tears.