I showed up to church on Sunday tired and broken. I haven’t had the nerve to show up in this space that way. I feel like I have been writing about how tired I am, how hard this season is, since about September. How could anyone still want to read that? I certainly am sick of it.

So I showed up to church on Sunday tired and broken, Christian was sick and the week had been hard and we are just to the part of the next year decision making process that all the balls are still in the air, but some of them have become real and it looks like they may just all hit us in the face, or dissolve in our hands and leave us with nothing.

Probably neither of these things will happen. Probably. I hope.

I managed to keep it together until a few songs in when they dismissed the kiddos. I sat and patted both their heads and managed to keep them sort of quiet. I remembered the day when I used to hold both of them, one on each hip as I contemplated the paradox of my double blessing, of the visceral feeling of having my hands full. There was so much weight, there was so much joy. There still is. It just is a little harder to hold.

I stood with my eyes closed and my hands raised, between two women who I love and admire who are also carrying so much. Some I know, some I don’t. It seems there is just so much to carry for so many people I know.

We were singing a song about bring things to the altar. Other people were singing. I was crying. What in the world do you want me to bring you God? What else could I possibly hold?

“I just want your brokenness. That is all. I want you, and so I want your brokenness.”

It has been a minute since I felt the Spirit speak so clearly. I cried harder and decided that brokenness it was. I would hand it back. Again. In January I was alerted to the fact that I have been blogging at Accidental Devotional for four years now. I have grown a lot and changed a lot. I have written and grown and written and grown. I have thought and un-thought and learned and taught. I have changed, and I have stayed the same and I am a little embarrassed that I am back in the place of needing this reminder again:

Abby Norman, you are already enough. All God wants is your brokenness. Hand that to God. It is enough. It is just so hard to believe that. Especially when everything is up in the air, especially when everything is so unclear. It is so hard for me to remember that I am enough, that what I do is enough, that God’s love and blessing on my have absolutely nothing to do with how much I do or don’t do. I don’t need to do one more thing, or one more thing better to experience the abundance of Jesus.

I got myself together in time to greet my babies as they came barreling into the sanctuary so we could take communion together. I am ministered to so deeply every time my children are offered a place at this table. While I was attending to my own portion, my child who showed up at the communion table so tentatively at first enthusiastically dunked her entire hand into the cup.

And the cup holder, God bless her, laughed. So I laughed, because what else is there to do, as your child stands next to you dripping purple drops from her hand. She looked me in the eye as I too dipped my portion, but with greater restraint, this is the blood of Jesus, poured out abundantly for you she said. And for a second I thought about dipping my whole hand in too.

I know I have said it all before, but maybe you need to hear it again too?

You are enough. God wants your brokenness. Go ahead. Dip your whole hand in. The table is open. The love is abundant.