This week I’ve felt broken. Physically. Emotionally. Mentally.

Just. Broken.

My body? I can’t even.

My emotions? Well, pbbblt.

My brain? C’mon, y’all.

Let’s just say, I tripped up the stairs only to fall back down. I cried in the Price Chopper parking lot so loudly the baby says, It’s okay! And I forgot a child at school.

Well. Then.

That’s me, over here hanging on by a noodle and whispering, It’s almost Friday. It's almost Friday. Sweet hallelujah, it's almost Friday!

But yesterday, I remembered her text.

One I’d read over and over and over, trying to etch it on my heart so I wouldn’t forget. One she’d sent back after I’d shared something hard. One I knew came from a girl who knows the beauty of being broken.

So I read it again. Each line reminding my heart of all that is true...

Your hallelujah is beautiful and inviting because of its brokenness.

My hallelujah is beautiful BECAUSE it is broken.

Grab hands as frail though they may be and lead others to Him.

My broken hallelujah, my frailty, my feeble hands that drop EVERYTHING and my feet that trip over NOTHING deliver His light to the broken, the hurt, the war-torn.

May the enemy curse the day your body was ruined…

My broken hallelujah fights as a warrior.

Sara, what the world says is weak...just isn’t.

In a world that sees broken things as disposable, God takes my broken places and makes them strong and powerful through the beauty of His grace...

This.

This is where the tears fall.

Every single time.

I know I’m broken. I know I’m weak. I know you are too.

But grace…

Each and every time, grace. Even when you feel too broken, too battered, too bruised, too unlovely, too fractured, too whatever-the-world-tells-you-is-too-far-gone. Even. When.

Grace will come.

It will bend and reach into all the broken places as it writes your hallelujah so that when someone comes to you at its invitation, you can put your arms around her and softly say,

I’m broken too.