Broken

Today has been a roller coaster.  I woke up to a message of news that a family friend and Legionnaire had died late last night.  I couldn't get my car out to make it to class.  The positive was going to see my hip surgeon for my three year follow up. Oh, and I guess getting two and half chapters of my hospitality textbook knocked out of the reading park was a positive while I had to wait for my surgeon.

I'm pretty terrible with making phone calls.  I put them off for a super long time until I absolutely have to make it and then I'm super anxious about it.  I was so happy with the follow with my surgeon that I was waiting impatiently on the drive home to get home and call my close friends to share the news.

The second call I made was to a friend I haven't talked to in months.  I used to feel guilty about not making more of an effort (more than the attempts that I had tried) to get in touch with him.  This friend had helped me through one of the toughest months I ever faced last year.  He was so patient with me when I cried, nope, actually I sobbed a few nights when I was feeling really down.  I shared with him my background with my medical problems and how I was feeling so pressured to be the "good" patient even though I was told to live my life like I didn't have a prosthesis.  He was patient and was an excellent listener (something that I was lacking at this point in my life).  I don't know how many hours he listened to me talk and put up with snotty and teary Jess.  Not only did he listen to me but he also asked me questions that others hadn't and I felt comfortable being vulnerable and answering with true honest answers instead of the sugar coated answers I tend to give out.

When I called this friend I told him about my follow up and we talked about how happy we were about the whole thing and about some of the awesome things I've done in the last three years.  He then asked me how I was doing in general.  I had told him a few months ago I had been struggling with a lot of different stuff so I knew he was going to ask this question.  I surprised myself by telling him the truth.  That I'm okay. I'm doing better than I was and that I'm trying to stay positive.  I didn't think or mediate about how I was going to reply.

This may not seem all that special but I've got a habit of hiding how broken I am.  Sarah wrote this lovely post that I was able to relate to about how there are different kinds of brokenness.  For me, I have a super hard time identifying when I'm broken.  Part of that is because I've trained myself for years to hide it and put on a smile.  It makes it even more difficult to be honest with my friends when I'm feeling broken because as I've realized today, sometimes I'm broken so much that I can't handle it on my own and I need a friend to lean on.

One of my favorite quotes is from Doctor Who:

We all change.  When you think about it, we're all different people all through our lives and that's okay, that's good.  You've got to keep moving, so long you remember all the people you used to be.

As I explained to my best friend of fifteen years (besties since kindergarten, we've been through it all) I'm not the same person that I was two years ago.  That's great because it means I'm growing as a person and I'm starting to become the person that God wants me to be.  On the flip side, I can't forget the person I was two years ago because it's a part of me, it's my history of who I am.

The fact that I didn't need to think of a sugar coated response to "How are you doing?" shows that I'm changing. I would even go as far as to say that I'm starting to heal some of the brokenness that I've been feeling the last year and a half. That, to me, is a really good feeling.