In my first post of 2013, I wrote about how maybe it’s best to be undone. I laugh now, not because I’ve changed my mind, but because I should have known the kind of year that would follow a statement such as that.

Stepping out in faith, walking hand-in-hand with tragedy, having my heart broken over and over again… I’m tempted to say that 2013 is a year I could have gone without, but I don’t think that’s true. As much as I feel I would have preferred to skip right over it, I think I needed this year of undoing.

It’s strange to think I didn’t see the theme until I looked back over the last twelve months, but God has been ripping me from my isolation, stripping me of self, forcing me to realize that I am my brother’s keeper and making me realize that maybe, sometimes, it’s okay to let my brother keep me.

I’ve spent years believing I’m strong enough to stand alone, but I’m finding that what I’ve needed most is to be strong enough to say that I need you.

Because I could spend a lifetime alone. I could. It would be easy, even. Much easier than setting my wants and needs aside in favor of another.

But it wouldn’t be right.

Because what is the purpose of a life that is not lived for others? Why am I even on this earth if I was not meant to live for something much bigger than myself?

If I’m only living for me, God can take me home right now. If I don’t have the hope of leaving a mark on the world, I’ve no purpose in this life.

In the last twelve months, I’ve learned to live beyond myself. I don’t have it mastered quite yet, and honestly I don’t hold high hopes of ever doing it exactly right, but I am trying. To live beyond me. To think about how my actions are going to impact the eternal.

To think about you. To live for you. To make every breath I breathe be one that will make the world a more beautiful place for you.

If I were to choose the methods that grow me, I wouldn’t have picked 2013.  Sometimes I think there wasn’t a moment of last year that didn’t feel like a freight train bowling me over.

But, once upon a time, I read a post by Hannah Brencher and made her words my battle cry:

“But if anyone inquires about the humility of a broken heart, I think it is quite worth it at the end of each day. To extend one’s own heart and allow it to be ruined completely, in hope that through the wreckage, someone else’s heart will dance today.”

I’ve been undone in the style of Revolution.
Ruined to the tune of Hannah Brencher.
Finding I’m a soldier in all of this.

But my heart is still dancing. Even through the wreckage, my heart is still dancing.

And that’s why I’m thankful for 2013, trials and tragedy included. That’s why I can look with expectancy to 2014.

Because my Jesus is shaping me, molding me, and sometimes breaking me, until I’m everything I needed to be all along.

I have a long way to go.
I have a most faithful Guide.

Ruined, Wrecked, Undone…

But not abandoned.