What We Carry by Emily Fales

We each experience brokenness in our lives, through personal failure, loss, and vulnerability. Many church services I grew up attending were quick to discuss our personal brokenness and personal pain. In some ways, it makes sense to begin our journey of faith here. Before we can recognize the image of God in others, we must first learn to see it in ourselves. Understanding my own brokenness was an essential part of discovering who God is and grasping my own belovedness.

Our personal sufferings are also echoed on a larger scale in the world. Injustice, poverty, abuse, and oppression leave deep marks on society, and the suffering we witness around us is overwhelming without an outlet to process it. The Western church often focuses on individual pain, remaining apathetic to the collective pain that we all have a part in.

All of this can keep us focused inward, disconnected from the deeper questions stirring in our hearts: Why is this happening? Why is there so much suffering in the world? Where is God in all of this? What does it look like to truly live like Christ did, today?

When personal faith remains solely introspective, it can unintentionally isolate and disconnect us from the suffering around us. Staying there, without walking deeper with one another, keeps us from a deeper experience of the heart of God revealed through shared brokenness. When we don’t allow our faith to move outward, toward others, toward community, toward addressing brokenness that we didn’t start, we miss this fuller experience of God’s heart.

When our spirituality is shaped only by individualism, we begin to view brokenness solely as something to be overcome on our own, rather than something we carry together. We may even start to believe that healing is only real if it happens in private, without needing others. Just as we experience our personal pain, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual, this individual experience of suffering opens our ability to empathize with others.

There are deep pains in the divisions of our world right now, and because of that, a growing apathy toward the pain that continues to be perpetuated. These divisions aren’t just out in the world, but we feel this in our own relationships and communities.

Many of you may feel the ache of division: politically, socially, economically, even within our churches and families. But our shared brokenness is what can unite us, if we allow it to.

We don’t know what to say about the suffering in our world, so many of us don’t say anything at all. If we aren’t affected directly, we discount ourselves from being a part of the solution. We don’t know how to navigate new complex issues, so we ignore them altogether. This is the normalized response in the West toward worldwide systemic brokenness. Yet the very suffering that should move our hearts, especially as people shaped by Christ’s undeserved suffering, is often what we turn away from in fear or fatigue. Our personal fear turns into quiet apathy.

I often think of Mother Teresa’s words, which offer a different way, “I see Jesus in every human being. I say to myself, this is hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This one has leprosy or gangrene; I must wash him and tend to him. I serve because I love Jesus.” To see Jesus in those who are in need requires compassion to that individual person and faithful resistance to the forces that perpetuate collective brokenness.

So what does this mean for ourselves and for the brokenness we witness in the world? It means a radical shift in perspective:

• Instead of seeing brokenness as something that disqualifies us from belonging, we recognize it creates a place of connection.

• Instead of striving for self-sufficiency, we embrace mutual dependence, where healing happens through shared grace.

• Instead of avoiding difficult relationships, we embrace the ongoing work of love and forgiveness, knowing that true transformation takes place in relationship.

In the pages that follow, members of our global community reflect on their own encounters with brokenness, personal and collective. Their stories don’t offer neat answers, but they do offer honesty and a reminder: we are not alone in our questions, our pain, or our healing. As you read, may you feel invited into deeper connection, with God, with others, and with the shared journey toward restoration.