Three recent events have caused my drive-time thoughts (quiet time alone in the car is when I do some of my best thinking) to turn and return to the topic of human brokenness – brutal murders of on African-American Bible study group in Charleston, Father’s Day, and a phone call from my daughter.  The incidents seemed to bear very little in common on the surface, but the more I pondered them, the more I noticed and was drawn to the pieces of fractured humanity in all three.

As I listened to the news coming out of Charleston and talked with friends and colleagues about the events, I continued to ask myself “what kind of person commits such an incomprehensible act of violence?”  And I couldn’t seem to come up with anything better than “a terribly, terribly broken one.”  I wondered (and keep wondering) what events, what unkind words, what lack of compassion, what circumstances wounded him to such a degree that mass murder was his only possible response.

Then there’s Father’s Day.  It always brings to mind the years when my relationship with my dad was somewhat rocky and I spent an inordinate amount of time rejecting all the greeting cards. I just could not find one with the appropriate lukewarm sentiment (which, at the time, was all I could honestly muster).  For many years I had been tallying up a list of his faults and failures and using them to build a significant wall. And, while the estrangement between my dad and I was probably almost imperceptible to others, it gnawed a hole in me for more than two decades.  Fortunately, with the encouragement of a loving husband, the care and compassion of good friends, the expertise of a committed therapist, and some extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit, the bits and crumbs of my own broken soul were glued back together in a way that brought me new insights and renewed love for the man who had loved me from the very beginning.

But the story of the Rev. Mrs. Sweet Baby Girl – my daughter, Emily – is the one that best illustrates where my line of thinking has traveled.  She’s a wife, a new mother (to the cute, little, 4 ½-month old, wee beastie named Evie), a United Methodist pastor (transitioning to her first solo appointment at a church in a small community in Nebraska), and part of the 2.3% of the American population that has been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).   No, she’s not a clean freak and she doesn’t really care all that much about keeping things orderly.  But she does deal, on a daily basis, with relentlessly intrusive and unwelcome thoughts that can affect her ability to live life in a normal fashion.

Emily was diagnosed more than 10 years ago, shortly after she started high school.  Holy coincidence brought us together with an extraordinary therapist, Judy, who brought love, care, compassion, encouragement and her expertise into each encounter.  She accepted Emily’s brokenness, but at the same time was confident that it could be transformed.  Judy helped Emily to plumb the depths of her being for every ounce of courage she possessed.  And when the two of them melded all their best attributes together, it was not possible for OCD to triumph.  The light returned to Emily’s eyes, her gorgeous smile reappeared, and over time she learned a multitude of techniques for quieting and coping with the OCD monster (as we came to call it).  But the truly amazing thing I began to notice was a beautiful new resiliency and strength that became apparent in her.  It seemed that the resin of love and care, provided by Judy, mixed with Emily’s bits of courage and flecks of brokenness, and began to fill in the cracks and fissures that her brain disorder had caused.  We rejoiced that the Emily we knew and loved was back, but now she also possessed a lustrous new strength and resiliency that we had never seen before.

While Emily is generally able to keep her OCD well-controlled under normal circumstances, stress – the kind caused by moving your family (including a nursing baby) to a new home in a new community (where you have no friends) in order to start a new job – can be a trigger that will cause it to ramp up.  So I wasn’t too surprised to get a call from her.  She needed to talk about all those upcoming stressors and make plans for coping.   During that conversation she mentioned how much she disliked the feeling of being “fractured and weak.”  Fortunately, I was able to remind her of just how far she has come from the time she was first diagnosed – from the time when she was so riddled by fear that she was not able to set foot inside a church to now being passionate about leading worship within those same walls.  Emily is a living, breathing example of the redemptive and transformative power of God’s love and grace. And when that power melds with our own strengths and frailties, it creates a healing bond that is beyond our understanding.

Redemption for Emily would not have happened without Judy and could not now be sustained without the strong, supportive and compassionate network of relationships that Emily has built.  Transformation in my own relationship with my father was a many-year process, facilitated by prayer and nurtured with the love and care of family, friends and professionals.  And, while it’s perhaps not an easy concept for me to accept, I am absolutely certain that God is graciously and lovingly pursuing a terribly broken young man in Charleston.  The really difficult question to answer is this: Will God’s hands in the world – will you and I – willingly provide the resin of love and forgiveness that can, with God’s Grace, lead that young man to a healing, life-redeeming and brilliantly Holy mending?