Rebuilding yourself after the world has broken you
Being broken. Who hasn’t been there? I mean, some of us are right there as we speak. The world will break you, then break you some more. The world will break you until there’s nothing left of you but the memory of who you were before the world came for you. But, like we’ve heard before, it’s about HOW you get up. It’s about getting up, dusting yourself off and fighting back harder.
Many times when this happens, it’s just easier to give up, to sit and find comfort in your pity party, to call the darkness that floods your heart “home”. And that’s the first mistake most of us make.
1. Don’t let the darkness consume you
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.
— John 1:5 NLT
2. Protect what defines you
So God created man in His own image, in the image and likeness of God He created him; male and female He created them.
— Genesis 1:27 AMP
The world will tell you are worthless, that you’re incapable of being great, that you are useless, that you’re ugly, that you over exaggerate when you express yourself, that you’re simply not enough. To the world, you’ll never be enough, and that is why you need to be enough for YOU. You need to believe that you have enough on the inside of you to get you from where you are to where you are created to be. You have to dig up that belief that I am enough, no matter who rejects me, believing that I am more than enough because their validation or rejection doesn’t define me. I am defined by He who made me. I am who He says I am.
3. Fight back
For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
— 2 Corinthians 10: 3-5
I’ll keep this one short. If you don’t get in the ring, defeat is guaranteed. So fight!
4. Learn to dream again
Throw the punches. What punches? Your dreams and ambitions, your stubborn faith, your refusal to be silenced by the enemy. There are many things the world can take away from you but not your Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ or your voice or your dreams and gifts (that doesn’t mean it won’t try, it just won’t succeed). When all is said and done, and you feel like you have nothing left, there is nothing that will set you alight the way your God given dreams will. When all you have is the seed planted in you, you have nowhere to go but up.
5. Learn to love again
Then there’s love. Loving beyond the pain, unforgiveness and hate. The world will teach you about hate, how to hate, who to hate, how much to hate. It will teach you how to be bitter and cold and that can consume you if you aren’t careful and intentional about putting up defences against that. That is why, in order to heal yourself and to subsequently heal the world around you, you need to love. You need to love in everything you do, say and even think.
“The only thing that really saves us in this little life is love… When love is infused into your every intention, action, thought, emotion, then you are saved. You are not just delivered from harm, but transformed.”
— Umair Haque
You rebuild yourself, heal yourself, save yourself, by choosing not to give up. By choosing love over bitterness that the world tries to fill us with. By choosing to be courages even though we fear being broken down again or failing. By pushing ourselves to get closer to achieving those dreams because we know that tomorrow can be better than our yesterday. Be love, give love and you’ll attract love.