Broken

Life stories.

They are hard to tell, and most of us hold them inside us until we meet a person that we believe will be receptive to our tale.

Oftentimes when we tell our “life story,” we describe all of the terrible things in our lives. For some reason, we believe that who we are is all of the darkness inside. We think that the only way to show people who we really are is to show them all of the awful things that we have been inflicted with, caused for others to feel, or hate about our condition. 

We let the darkness define our very being.

And it crushes us, day by day, month by month, year by year.

It’s scary to let your life be illuminated by those around us. Not just because of the questions that I have placed above, but because people often leave. They leave, and we start to believe that this brokenness, regardless of its cause, is going to take away all of the light in the world.

So we let the darkness define how we can be loved.

And as the darkness wells up in our hearts, we start to believe that we are unlovable.

I have had the blessing of meeting many beautiful souls whose lives have been scarred by the actions of the world around them. Some of these souls have caused harm to themselves. They trust me with this darkness for but a moment, but then they quickly run away.

No way could I understand.

No way could I possibly love someone for who they truly are.

No innocent little Catholic girl could ever understand and accept the soul before me.

This thought process is why those of faith receive such a bad reputation. Because we are afraid of being sullied by the dark and broken pieces of the world, we hide. We run away towards the things that we know, and we convince ourselves that we are doing the right thing by going away. So many people are broken, and yet it is that exact brokenness that allows for us to love them.

But we don’t.

We run away, towards what we think is a lighter world.

Christianity does not teach us to avoid darkness. The truth of the matter is that true Christianity is based on a man, fully human and fully divine, facing the darkest and most broken parts of the world. He goes to the outcasts, the misunderstood, and the evil. He goes to the people who do not expect to see Him.

Most importantly, Christ allowed Himself to be killed in the most evil way.

Christ let Himself be broken.

Christ saw each person for who they truly were. You see, He was there at the beginning of time when all of us were formed. He knew us, and He loved us. Much like a school project where you work incredibly hard and do not care what a single soul says because you know how perfect your project is, God sees us as perfect and worth every moment.

You are lovable.

But that does not mean that you will not be broken.

Christ got up on the Cross because He knew that we were in need of His love. He knew that we would not believe that we were saved if He did not get up on the Cross, and He knew that this was the only way.

He was scared, and He even asked God to take the suffering away.

But He still got on the Cross.

To be broken is not the same thing as to be unlovable. Rather, being broken means that there is something to be glorified. Each broken piece of your heart is not meant to snuff out the light of love. In fact, the broken pieces of our hearts are the very candlesticks meant to light up our lives.

And as we find light in the darkness, we can bring light to those who have suffered like we have.

You see, our brokenness is not unique. We all share in the same human condition, and we all feel pain, suffering, loss, and fear. However, those moments which brought out the darkness in our hearts do not make us dark. In fact, those pieces allow for those who have seen light to bring joy and love to us.

If we allow others to share in our suffering, then they may be able to understand the broken pieces and bring light in to the darkness.

They may have shaky hands, but they can love you.

I have been in a position where I did not trust the soul in front of me. While my darkness may not be entirely shocking, I found it incredibly difficult to be honest with myself and the people who were trying to love me.

I ghosted people

I did not tell the whole story to my friends

I let my judgmental side of myself rule those days.

And all of the love that I could have received was taken from me. In my fear, I cut off people who truly did care about me. It was not fair, and they were hurt terribly in return. Yet however hard they tried to love me through the pain, they could not get through to me anymore. It made my days far more difficult than they ought to have been.

I’ll never forget the day that I admitted my fault.

I came up to a friend that I had ghosted, and I apologized for what I had done.

He could have rejected me. He could have told me that I was not a friend worth having. He could have said that he never wanted to speak to me again and that we could no longer be friends. That was what I expected him to say to me.

Instead he smiled the biggest smile, and he told me that we would be friends no matter what.

And we’re still friends, even if we’re miles and miles apart.

To let ourselves be vulnerable is scary. To love those who feel unlovable is scary. However, it is by meeting that brokenness that we allow our hearts to be transformed. 

“This is where the healing begins

This is where the healing starts

When you come to where you’re broken within

The light meets the dark”

~Healing Begins, Tenth Avenue North

This is all fine and good. Letting others in to the darkness can make our lives better. We get that. However, many of us believe that we are a burden. We think that we have to be able to give something back, or we have to get better right away. After all, showing God’s love to a broken heart is nothing but hardship for the lover right?

No.

To love another allows us to more fully understand just how much God loves us. When we choose to love someone else, we are reminded of how much God loves each one of us. We bear the cross for those we encounter in small ways, and we feel the power Christ must have had in order to endure such suffering.

By loving those who feared their darkness I have found far more love than I ever expected.

“To love another is to see the face of God” Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

We are all broken.

We are all loved.

Today, and every day, let’s allow the broken pieces become the candlesticks to drive out the darkness.

When Home Stopped Being Home

Being a 20 something, and I suspect beyond that, we are constantly searching. We are searching for a place to call our own. Whether it be a job or a city or an apartment, we are all searching for something.

We want to belong.

All of my life, I have identified locations as important. The first was a specific seat on a swingset. The second was the band room at Salpointe. The third was a gazebo in the middle of Belmont’s campus. The last was another specific swingset.

But the place that stole my heart was my home.

Nashville, TN.

I remember the first time I drove to Nashville by myself. Andy Grammer’s song “Back Home” came on the stereo as I came to the top of a hill and saw the Nashville skyline. My eyes watered as I recognized the city I called home.

Home was found in a gazebo, in a house, in a familiar drive to a familiar house, in a coffeeshop-

Home was a place.

This trip was different. 

I did not want to go to every “Nashville” place, nor did I think of going on long drives through the southern landscape. Instead I sat in the living room, content with watching my sister play Super Mario, watched three different lacrosse games, and happily ran errands for my parents.

In fact, when my friends asked me what there is to do in Nashville, the first thing I thought was “go to a Father Ryan Lacrosse game?”

This bothered me at first. Nashville no longer felt like “my city,” and I did not understand why. Notre Dame did not feel like “my city” either, so there had to be a place for me right? After all, everyone should have a place to call home.

The hardest part of growing up is realizing that we have “outgrown” our home. A location that once held all of our comfort and understanding is ripped from our lives, not by a specific action, but because we do not fit in that space anymore. It is not that we cannot go home, but we know that we cannot stay there any longer.

And yet we still feel like we belong.

I knew that I still belonged because of my amazing family. Not once have I felt like I did not belong at home. In fact, this trip had all of the members of Team Newton (including Kate!). My heart was completely full, and I did not want to leave their sides.


Even though I knew I was at home, Nashville did not feel like my home.

This was because home is not a location.

I realized this as I pulled up at Belmont University to thank my professors for writing my grant recommendation letters last minute. As I walked through campus, I felt a strange sense of disconnect. This had not been the case the past three visits to Nashville. I felt like I did not belong there anymore.

That was until I saw a few familiar faces.

I was welcomed in with huge hugs and smiles. People laughed and they asked me about my life. Some of these people were only in a few of my classes, and yet they were thrilled to see me.

Home is not a location.

Home is where we experience love.

No matter how long it had been, I would always belong to the Belmont community.

No matter how far I would travel, I would always be a member of Team Newton.

Each of us is going to move, change, and become more of what we are meant to be. If that means that we have to change locations, then so be it. However, that does not mean that the love that we have experienced will ever leave us. Love does not have to leave because it cannot leave.

Love is transcendent.

Love is timeless.

“God is love” ~1 John 4: 8

You see, our true home is not on this earth. Heaven is our true home. However, Heaven is not a place, at least, it is not a place that we can identify on a map. No, Heaven is complete union with God. It is being with Him for the rest of eternity. God is everywhere, whether we see it or not.

Heaven is right here

Right now. 

By choosing to love, we choose to be in communion with God. So then, when we love one another, we bring Heaven to this Earth. Each time we welcome in another soul, we find ourselves in a small piece of Heaven. We find our true home on this Earth.

Loving someone does not depend on the location.

All we need to do is be open to love.

The gazebo, the band room, all of my old family houses, all of the old swingsets, Nashville, these are all places where I opened my heart up to love in ways that I never did before. I let people in, and I was welcomed in. Tears and laughs were shared. It didn’t matter where I was, all that mattered was that I felt loved and I loved in return.

Leaving Nashville, while always challenging, was easier this time because I knew that no matter where I went, I would find love in my life. Whether it be from a phone call home or from a smile from a friend, I just needed to find love again.

And I did.

I came in to the basement with a somewhat heavy heart today, and I saw someone that I haven’t really spoken to. They gave me a genuine smile, one that reminded me of the love the Notre Dame community has poured in to my heart day by day, and I felt joy again.

You don’t have to go far to be at home.

Home is not in one place.

Text your mom, be nice to the jerk in class, forgive those who have wronged you, apologize for what you have done, and just…love others.

Home is right at your fingertips.

Home is down the hall.

Home can always be found with a little love.

While we may all be searching for more, we do not have to go far to find our true home. No matter where you are, no matter what you do, there is always a way to find love. And as you experience love more and more, the more you will feel at home on this earth. You are never alone.

Dear Reader, whomever you are, I love you.

Welcome Home.

You're Not Important

I think we all want to be important.

We want to be the MVP. We want to be the one who wins the award. We want to be the one someone thinks of when they are planning a party. We want to be the person people turn to when things go wrong, right, or in between. 

Even if we aren’t all Type A, we all want to matter.

All we see is our own reality, and as a result, we think that everything we do matters. Or at least, we hope that we matter.

We hope that we’ll be recognized for all that we are and are going to be.

The thing is…

No one can be the most important all the time.

Take the theater for example. While a solo is amazing to listen to, many of the pieces would particularly boring without the chorus. Without the dancers, there would be significantly less action. Yes, there is always a time and a place for a solo, but you cannot completely discredit the chorus.

And even if you were the very best.

You may not fit the role that the director is casting that day. It is not that you are not good enough or that they have something against you.

You just don’t fit that role.

This issue does not exist in careers and in theater and in the workplace. To some degree, we all would like to be the most important in a more intimate way.

We want to be important to everyone around us.

I am particularly bad about this. Whenever I enter a new group of people, I try to integrate myself in to the lives of everyone around me. Not only that, but I do everything in my power to make everyone like me. I make excessive jokes, talk myself down, and try to please everyone. All of the attention makes me feel important.

Truth is.

You can’t be important to everyone.

Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain,

and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, 

and he said to him, "All these I shall give to you, 

if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.”

~Matthew 4:9

I had an experience of being on top of the world. It was silly, but since I moved out of "Newton Stadium" as my family calls it, I had managed to make everyone like me, at least I thought so. I worked well, and I made friends fast. I did what was asked, and then some, for as many people as I could physically manage.

But I could not please everyone.

And one day I had to make the choice…what would I want?

The first choice was one that could potentially bring a lot of joy to people. I could maintain my place of “power” in the little world I had made for myself, and I knew that if I just made that decision that I would continue to be the lead role.

It was a decision that I knew would go against my morals.

It was a choice that could change who I was as a person.

The second choice was to turn away, to move forward as I normally would. I knew that if I took this path that I would lose my status. I would lose friends, and I would be mocked for what I chose to do.

It was a decision that would maintain my morals.

It was a choice that ultimately make me less important.

In the end, I chose the latter. While I know that it was the right choice, I would be lying if I said that I don’t look back on that day and think of what I could have done to change things. I think of all the friendships, all of the status, all of the connections that I lost because of that decision. Because I did the right thing, I suddenly became less important to many people.

I knew that I no longer fit the role, and yet I tried to fix everything.

Not because I wanted to clear the air.

Because I wanted to be important.

I do not regret the decision that I made. While I may have lost quite a bit, I gained so much more by being true to who I am as a person. I had to remind myself over and over that I did the right thing, but as I grew in myself, I saw just how important it was for me to be myself, not who everyone else wanted me to be.

Being important does not matter in the grand scheme of things.

I saw that someone else had taken the place I once stood in. It hurt that they were considered more important than I ever had been. Yet as I looked at them, playing the role I thought I wanted so badly, I realized that I could never have been right for that role, not when they were able to play the part.

The part I played will never be acknowledged.

And I am ok with that.

Maybe I did not play the main role, but I played a role in the lives of those around me long enough for the one who took my place to shine brighter than I could have ever dreamed.

While we may wish to make everyone happy, to be the most important person in the room, we will never be able to captivate each soul. That does not matter though, because you are already important.

You may not be important to everyone you meet but…

You are important to the One who made you.

God made each one of us specially, with a unique ability to love and live with those around us. Some of us are able to love by words, others by physical affection, and still others by random acts of kindness. The way that we love and live may fit one life, but it may not fit within another life.

And that’s ok.

Because all love belongs to God, and He will always see you as important.

"I will come to you in the silence

I will lift you from all your fear

You will hear My voice

I claim you as My choice

Be still, and know I am near"

You Are Mine, David Haas

Sometimes we do not see God’s love in our lives. I know that I have yelled at Him in prayer numerous times because I was frustrated with how my life did not seem to fit with anyone else’s life.

Especially when practicing my faith leaves me alone and misunderstood.

“If what You say is right, then why am I alone?” I would ask Him.

After all, by trying to live out the morals given to me by my faith and my family have left me sitting alone on the weekends, unimportant to so many others. Mentioning my faith blackballs me in my field. Being Christian is “taboo,” and no one seems to think that I can really live like this for long. They say it’s childish to keep on living like this.

They laugh.

They leave.

They take more people with them.

At first I was bothered by this, and I looked back at the choice I made that led me to where I am today. And as I looked back, I noticed all of the little moments that came afterwards, moments that reminded me just how much I would have lost had I not chosen to be true to myself.

I made precious friends who taught me how to love those who did not agree with me.

I drew closer to the family that always loved me, and will always see me as important.

Most importantly, because I did not go against myself, against what my God had given me, I was able to find myself. I found the happy little girl who could sit in the basement lab and draw pictures of proteins as swing sets and dance down the hallways when no one was looking. 

I found a girl who could love with all of her heart, not because she was a silly child, but because she could believe in authentic love.

All I needed was to remember that I was important to God and to my family.

“To cultivate acquaintence with many whom I meet

To cherish friendship with but a chosen few, and to study the perfecting of those friendships.”

~Alpha Gamma Delta Purpose

In time, I found people who truly saw me, and they saw me as important. It was not easy, and I looked back at my “popular” self often. Yet as I drew closer to those who truly loved me, I found God amongst them, and with God in my midst, I found myself.

I feel more important now with my cherished few than I ever did with the crowds I tried to please.

“A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter;

he who finds one finds a treasure”

~Sirach 6:14