A strange freedom

You can read a striking article here by Katherine Wolf about her experience of a stroke and her reflections, as a former beauty queen, on the beauty of brokenness.

I think she’s putting her finger on something that’s worth exploring. All humans experience brokenness as we live in this sin-broken world but we try to keep it hidden ‘backstage’ in our lives.  The ‘front stage’ we present often looks pretty together.

Disability changes that.  Suddenly we find that the front stage of our lives is visibly broken. We live with a public brokenness that others relate to us through.

Of course, that is harder in many ways.

Nonetheless, Katherine Wolf is saying there’s a strange freedom in that; we don’t have to pretend anymore.  The front-stage brokenness and the back-stage brokenness can now be joined up and lived as a bit more of an integrated whole.

Not what we might have chosen, but it opens up the possibility of a strange freedom all the same.

Maybe we can be a blessing to others through this.