It’s Five-Minute Friday, but founder and long-time host, Lisa-Jo Baker, is taking a well-deserved cyber-sabbatical this week.

A few of us die-hard, FMF junkies decided to hijack the tradition and detour over to Trending Mama’s place for a link-up this week on the prompt,

BREAK

To join, pop over here for more details: http://trendingmama.com/break/

Without further ado, let the five minutes commence ..

***

The triple bypass was scheduled for the following week.

I held the phone to my ear, gauging emotion over 8,000 miles through a static-laced receiver.

“So, how are you feeling about the surgery?”  I swallowed a bubble gum wad of apprehension and it sat, expanding in the pit of my nervous stomach.

“Oh, fine,” came the nonchalant reply from my matter-of-fact, retired cardiologist father.

“The biggest pain in the neck about the whole thing is the fact that they have to break my sternum before they can get to my heart.”

Those words pierced me, through flesh and bone — a stark realization I had never considered before.

“That’s the part that takes the longest to heal,” my dad went on.

And then it hit me.

God does the very same thing with us.

We have to be broken before He can get to the heart.

He breaks us, and then He heals us — restored, complete, whole.

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

~ Psalm 51:17

It hurts.  It takes weeks, sometimes months, to heal.

But it’s oh, so necessary, if we want to live.

Photo credit: David Goehring, Flickr Creative Commons