"Once upon a time there was a stunning young lady who lived way up high on the 3rd floor. She had hair that flowed like a gentle river, and eyes deep with thought and wonder. Her mind was continuously filled with day dreams of knights saving damsels in distress, while she worked at the neighborhood burger joint. She always wondered, "why do I dream these things, wishing that they were my life, when there is no way it could ever be?" Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, on and on...it was always the same day after day, a dull and colorless life. Flipping burgers, toasting buns, "o drats! Too much ketchup on that one! Isn't there something more to life than this?" she thought to herself
Her boss was a surly man. His heart was dark and full of bitterness. Years upon years he had neglected to care for himself, and his every word was like a sword piercing her young heart. You see, she could never explain to you why, for she could not understand it herself, but her heart cared for this man. Even though his anger and sharp tongue seemed to only cause wounds in others, she thought...no she knew, that he only needed someone to love him. Perhaps than, he wouldn't feel so constantly miserable inside, and hate everyone else because of his dissatisfied and empty heart.
On a bright and clear afternoon, just before beginning her shift, our young friend decided to put before herself a goal. With set determination she silently vowed to do all with in her power to show her boss that somebody cared for him. She did not know how she would go about fulfilling this vow, nor could she, at the time, fathom how terribly difficult completing such a task would be, but her young heart was undaunted. Her brilliant mind began to think up hundreds of beautiful ways to reach into her boss' heart and find the soft spot she was convinced was in there. "After all, no body has an entirely black heart. Right?" she said to herself.
She wrote him anonymous cards with pictures of peaceful streams on the front. When he yelled, rather demanded, for someone to do something written under his job description, our fair friend was first to respond. She covered for him when he slacked off to indulge in the sin of his selfishness. She arrived at work extra early to help him set up the work stations, for she knew that his evenings of heavy drinking often caused him to be 'too sick' to have them ready in time. She lied for him. She cleaned up the messes he made. She stayed late into the night, so that he could leave early. Soon enough her usual daydreams of knights in shining armour were replaced with constant thoughts of, "what else can I do to get through to him?" Within only a handful of weeks, her heart began on a discouraged path. She struggled with her inability to accomplish her goal. The more she did, the worse he seemed to become. He never thanked her for her sacrifices. When she could have been at home eating dinner with her parents, but instead choose to close up for him, he waved it off as 'no big deal' and spent the night running around town, sowing corruption to his flesh. She watched in astonishment as his heart only sank deeper and deeper into self righteousness and strife.
"Why is Nothing that I do enough!", she screamed in her head. "Why does it seem that my helping him just makes him more angry inside?! What is wrong with him that he doesn't recognize my sacrifice and all the turmoil I am putting myself through to make his life better?!"
Two months past by and nothing changed in her boss' heart. He grew more surly, outrageous, and contemptuous. Of course no one really noticed that about him, because to them he had always been that way. They did, however, begin to notice the drastic change with in our friend's heart. Her eyes no longer showed wonder, nor did her mind ever venture to daydream. Her tongue became quick to throw out coarse and bitter words. They also noticed how unfair her appearance became. Once she had radiated young beauty, with a smile that dazzled them all. Now her face was sullen with grieve at the constant disappointment she felt in unattaining her goal. She no longer smiled, not even the slightest curvature would elevate her lips. She only frowned, from the depths of her heart, she frowned.
You see, what our friend never realized in the beginning, before venturing to love someone so unlovely as her boss, was that she herself had no love to give. She was like so many others we know, maybe even ourselves. Her life was empty, but ok. Her heart was searching for a purpose, but when she thought she found it in helping someone else, she was swiftly let down when they did not respond like she expected. She never saw that she herself was broken inside, and needed to be fixed before she could reach out and even begin to help someone with much more baggage than she carried. She was a dried up well, with no water to give to those who were thirsty.
She once day dreamed of knights saving maidens, wishing she could be one of them. She never recognized the reason she daydreamed these things was, in actuality, because she was one of them. Our friend couldn't see it, blinded were her eyes to her own need, but she also needed to know someone loved her."
Moral of the story: We are all broken people and we can not 'help to fix' any other broken person before we first come to realize our own brokenness and need for a repair man.
Too often we try to 'fix' others to make up for our own feelings of inadequacy. We can't fix ourselves by fixing others, that is like saying a person with two broken hands can set their friend's broken leg. Its impossible and exhausting for the one who tries to do this. Only when we come to recognize how completely broken we are, can we look up and find the repair man, Jesus, standing in front of us. With His tools in hand: Salvation, Love, Strength, Perseverance, Discipline, Trials, Prayer, Patience, Grace, Study, and so many more, He uses all our time on this earth to take us from our beginning state of a hopeless mess, to re-build us into a whole new tool. One that is like a tool box. He fills us with His tools, (ie.; Salvation, Love, etc.), and than carries us around, fixing others while using us. A tool box can't go out and fix the leaky faucet, its just a tool box. But the repair man can reach inside the tool box, find the right tool for the job, and fix what is broken.
I know that all I want to be is a tool box. Someone who doesn't have any of the answers from with in myself, but who carries around the words of hope and prays for other's salvation.
I don't exactly know why, but my blogs tend to end on a serious note, (even though when I began this I really was planning on just making up a dumb story). O well, maybe this needed to be written. Let me know what you think. Does this all make sense? I have someone in mind as I write this. I hope so badly that she could recognize that fixing other's won't do a thing to fix the emptyness she lives with in her heart.
Epilogue:
Our young friend wasn't left in despair forever. The repair man found her broken heart, and she let Him in to fix it.
