Over the years I have spoken to my fair share of people about life and faith. These conversations have clearly varied in content however there has always been one line that has shown up almost every time – “God is fixing me”
I must admit that for the first two decades I too confessed and believed that what I needed was to be fixed. Over an over while I heard people share and teach I could not help feel that there was something majorly wrong with me. With every passing sermon I added to my never ending list of the things that needed to be fixed. It seemed that for every fault I managed to bring under control three more showed up.
Not long ago I happened to be waiting for my car to be fixed at the mechanic. The waiting area was right across from the shop where the mechanics were working with the cars. As I observed I began to think about this fixing so many of us say we need in our lives. With cars as we all know when they need fixing it is only a part or a few that need to simply be changed with new ones and it is done. If it is any more than a few then they are declared totaled and they are thrown into a junk yard.
As I look at myself I see that much of me has been broken and crushed during my life. Such has been the damage that if I was a car I would be spending my days inside a junk yard. Yet over the last decade I have noticed that in spite of this fact I have nevertheless been experiencing an amazing renewal in my life. Unlike a car I have not had anything replaced nor fixed as much as I have had plenty healed. One huge big away that shows me that this is what has been happening are the big and rugged scars I have inside instead of the brand new parts that pretend to show that nothing was ever broken in the first place.
Fixing I am coming to understand is something that is impossible with human beings. We, unlike cars, are not the product of several metal parts that have been put together which means that we can’t just take a part of us and replace it with another. Today I see more than ever before that the truth is that we were never meant to be fixed as much as we were meant to be healed. Fixing is transactional. We take the car to the mechanic. He fixes it, we pay, and then leave the shop and the mechanic behind. Healing on the other hand is relational. The healer of our lives is always with us and the healing we experience is the consequence of the intimate relationship we have with him on an ongoing basis. No shop needs to be visited. No part needs to be paid for nor changed.
So if this is the case then why is it that so many of us are still under the impression that what we need is to be fixed?
Well I am coming to understand that the reason for this is because there is something very attractive to our ego about fixing. You see fixing gives us the feeling that it can be done quickly and that we have control of when and how it happens. But as we all know this attractive approach of fixing is a vicious circle that never ends as we are ultimately always made to feel like we are defective and there is something majorly wrong with us. No matter how hard we try to get fixed. Furthermore the majority of us that still believe that we need to be fixed carry within us an inferiority complex. This unhealthy perspective can be easily manipulated into believing that there is only one way to be fixed and that this can only happen under the close supervision of those that tell you this, which in their view, of course, are the only qualified life mechanics around.
In my experience this works for the mechanics but never for the wounded customers.
Therefore consider with me today the possibility that the reason why most unconscious leaders always try and quickly fix us is because they see the condition of others as a direct reflection on how well they are doing their jobs. In other words is all about them and not those they claim to want to help. Consider also that God on the other hand is neither unconscious nor insecure in who he is. This frees him to look deeper than what meets the eye as he understands that what is going on outside is always the consequence of something being out of place inside. While others try and “fix” it better he miraculously transforms and heals it into the way it was originally meant to flow. You see, he is still of the opinion that what he created all those years ago is still very good and unlike a car it doesn’t need to be fixed nor improved. It just needs to be healed.
Remember – Don’t let other people’s shame steal away from you the best opportunity we all have to be intimate with God, by trying to quickly wipe away your pain and brokenness under the carpet of false pretenses.
-pablo-
Photo by Tuyen Vu
