I don’t know about you, but it takes a lot out of me to being myself to desire attending any kind of conferences. The introvert in me dreads it. The irony is that I am good at organizing events and camps and conferences. I can facilitates the majority of the needs… but that’s different, because I have well defined responsibilities, I am focused and driven.

Planning and preparing, I also prepare my mind and my heart over time. But it takes a wile to bring myself into the present, when I am just an attendee.

It’s a matter of willing my heart into the present, as well as the speaker bringing me into the moment.
The speaker, Ann Voskamp, a beautiful woman who draws you in somehow, shared a bit of her story last night and today she dove right into her message. This is a beautiful conference, well organized, joyful, complex, colorful, comfortable. Today she shared the four questions she asks herself, when sitting with the Lord:
1. Where are you? (the way God asks Adam and Eve when they were hiding in the Garden)
2. What do you want? (What is your hear’s desire, or What do you want me to do to/for you …as Jesus asks those seeking his healing.)
3. Are you willing to drink my cup? (the same cup of suffering)
4. Do you love me? (as Jesus asks Peter, and then tells him: feed my sheep)

Ann talked about the art of transforming brokenness into even more precious piece of art.

Ann, wife of a farmer, as she like to introduce herself as, highlights the wisdom she sees unfold every day under her own eyes, at the farm. Everything that grows needs first to be broken. The seed need to break to be fruitful, the ground needs to break through plowing, and the sky breaks to give forth rain…

We shield our brokenness. We hide it, often out of shame, but the same is more painful and harmful and hurtful than the brokenness in the first place. Letting it out to be mended by God, to step into God’s light to be loved by Him, first and foremost, we find healing and let forth beauty.

“With-ness” and “witness” – that’s what we need for healing and the transformation of brokenness.

What brokenness are we willing to give to God for him to heal, to mend, to fix, to transform into something more than we ever hoped? We all have brokenness, and it is there where God loves us the most.