Hope.

At school there was always a lot of talk about how "broken" we all are, and while there is some truth to this, insofar as we are all touched by original sin and have particular struggles in our lives, I have always been frustrated by this mentality. People who talk about being "broken" often fall into one of two categories: those who think that people who are broken need to be fixed and go back to the way they were, and those who believe that we need to leave our brokenness behind and just move on. 

There is something wrong with both viewpoints. Maybe we are "broken", maybe that's what we can call that terrible unwavering temptation we battle everyday with varying success, but if we are broken we can't simply be fixed. We can't just glue together the pieces and be good as new. Because we aren't... we're better. We're new, we're different. We "break" like muscles, not china vases. With each little break and a lot of God's grace, we are built back up into something stronger than what we were before. Each sorrow, each sin, each trial, when properly treated as the opportunity for growth that it is, only serves to transform us into stronger, deeper, wiser people than we were before. 

And so we cannot, nor should we attempt to, return to our previous state or pretend that nothing ever happened. Something did happen, and maybe it was terrible, awful, no-good, and even very very bad, but somehow it changed us, and we must embrace that (there's really nothing else you can do anyway, so you might as well make the best of it) and allow ourselves to be transformed. And we will be. It might be difficult to see, especially for yourself (it's ever so much easier to see good things working in other people's lives), but the change is there. If you know anything about the Romantic movement in literature, you know what I mean when I say that the person who allows himself to be transformed by such experiences becomes sublimely beautiful. 

So don't despair... we're all mad here, and it's a beautiful, growing, fabulous madness.

PS- for anyone who knows what I mean, think back to the muscle reference and laugh... *poof*