It's been a year. 

I don't know that anyone has emerged from the past 12 months unscathed. Some have had big, awful things to deal with, and some have had less awful things, but it's been stressful for just about everyone I know.

For me, it's been a series of many frustrating events, piled on top of one another, for months on end. Nothing catastrophic, but added together it's been hard. And it's come to a boiling point in the past few weeks.

I'm naturally a positive person who thinks everything will turn out ok, and yet I've had moments recently where I've thought, "this might actually break me."

Adding to the pressures of everything else, my youngest actually DID break over the weekend, falling hard the wrong way off a snowboarding jump. 

Today was the day to get it casted, and as we met with the orthopedic surgeon, she explained to Sadie what was going on with her wrist. Sadie has what's called a buckle fracture, where instead of a clean break, it's like the bone gets kind of mushed up into itself and buckles out. It's compressed. She's young, so she should heal quickly and have her cast off in 4-6 weeks. 

But the part that really struck me is what she said next. "The cool thing about a broken bone is that after it heals, it's actually stronger than it was originally." Isn't that incredible? Our bodies are amazing, that they'd work to make themselves even better than before when a trauma occurs.

I think the same is true with our hearts and our minds.

So many of us have reached the breaking point in recent months. We've lost loved ones and jobs, and feel disconnected from relationships. Life is nothing like we've always known it to be. Our friends are fighting on social media. We've experienced hardship.

But I believe that after the breaking, there is healing. My prayer today is that, whatever your struggle, that you'd feel your heart and your mind rebuilding in health. That you'd know a peace that passes understanding. That you'd feel loved and known. 

And that someday soon, we'd all be able to say, "You know, the cool thing about my brokenness is that I'm stronger than I was originally."