Broken

Webster's Online Dictionary defines "broken" as: violently shattered into parts, damaged or altered by breaking, made weak or infirm, subdued completely (syn- crushed, sorrowful), not complete or full.  

When I asked Chris how he was doing the other night, his response was simply, "I feel broken."

Those of you who know him at all know him as a man of few words.  When we are with others, he really doesn't speak much unless he has something important to say.  Fortunately the same rule doesn't seem to apply when it's just the two of us and we really have a lot of wonderful conversations.  So for him to sum up everything so perfectly in one word really shouldn't have shocked me. 

It's a remarkably apt description of the way we've been feeling.  We both still get up each day, we go to work, we take care of our girls, we manage the house, we talk to friends and family.  But even while we do all of that, we're acutely aware of the fact that we are not quite whole right now.  We've got a lot of pieces and parts that haven't settled back into place yet and we've each most certainly been damaged in this process.

Thankfully we have one another.  We've also got the support of our families and friends. We've been blessed with the prayers of those who know us and many more from people we've never met. We know that in time, we'll get to be a little less broken. We also know that like anything that has to be put back together, we won't be quite the same the second time around.  I think there is even the possibility that we'll actually be a little stronger and a lot wiser when we're finally whole again.