At the close of one of those days, I am left feeling like I’m falling apart at the seams.

 

I feel like I’m constantly in a state chaos. I’m always moving on from one thing to the next, never stopping for rest or a break; there’s always something else to do and somewhere else to be and someone else to help.

 

I never stop.

 

I feel like I never stop, and now I feel like I’m falling apart.

 

It’s been a long day. Meetings and counseling and errands and booking and managing businesses and ministries and everything in between.

 

I was rushing to get everything done, running full speed to make it to church.  In the hustle and bustle, I found myself continually tripping over something, but every time that I would look down, I wouldn’t see anything.

 

What was already a stressful day was exasperated by constantly feeling like something was underfoot and tripping me up.  But still, every time that I looked underfoot, there was nothing.

 

With no suspect in sight, I kept stumbling my way through my day.

 

Right as I was walking out of the office, I tripped.  My eyes immediately fell down to see what it was that I had stumbled on and I found that my shoe was the culprit.

 

Somehow, the sole of my boot had separated from the fabric part that wrapped around my foot, and it was folding under every time that I took a step.

 

When I was standing, gravity and the weight of my foot pressing down kept the material in place.  However, whenever I moved and picked my foot off of the ground, the part of the boot that encompassed my foot separated from the rubberized part with the tread, and it folded under me and caused me to stumble.

 

It seemed like a pretty easy fix… just super glue it back together or change shoes.

 

But at the end of a very long, very taxing day, it was enough to send me over the edge.

 

Irrational tears welled up in my eyes as I contemplated all of the things that I was out of control of.

 

The two things that I could control: changing shoes or glueing them back together— were not options because I didn’t have time to go home and change, nor did I have any glue.

 

I felt powerless and out of control and unable to process my real feelings because so much was being asked of me that day.

 

So, like the cherry on top of the proverbial cake, a flimsy shoe topped off a day of disappointment and distress.  To anyone else, it would have probably been “just a shoe”, but to me, it was the final straw being pulled that resulted in my unraveling.

 

It was just a shoe, but it was all that it took for me to completely fall apart.

 

The day’s troubles and the week’s burdens and months of issues fell onto me, all at once.  They compounded, growing and growing to a point of complete overwhelm, all because an old shoe tipped me over the edge.

 

I was frustrated and upset.  I couldn’t go home and change and I was out of superglue.  Those problems seemed trivial and small, but, with everything else that had been going on under the surface, it took one little thing to completely unravel me and leave me feeling like I was completely falling apart.

 

What most would looked at as a broken shoe, I saw bills that needed to be paid and deadlines that hadn’t been met and unresolved relationship issues that needed to be approached.

 

When I saw my shoe fold in half, I saw all the little things in my life that led up to that moment.  Work issues and boy issues and friendships and ministry issues that piled up one on top of the other were suddenly unleashed; a torrential flood of overwhelm broke and swallowed me whole.

 

All of the sudden, it wasn’t just a shoe, it wasn’t just a moment… all of the sudden, yet not so suddenly at all, I was falling apart.

 

What seemed like one isolated event was actually the final straw in a series of events that led to my undoing.  I wasn’t just failing to meet deadlines and failing to catch up and failing to see work accomplished— now I was failing as a person and failing as a leader and failing as a friend.

 

With the separating of a shoe from its sole, I was separating myself from the belief that I was good and worthy and successful.

 

Weeks of unmanaged issues came gushing out of the busted dam of my heart, and all I could do was say one thing over and over again.

 

“I am falling apart.”

 

I was not my wins or my successes or my advances. I was not a confident leader or a kind friend or a wise counsellor.  The act of falling apart seemed to rewrite that, dismissing its integrity and arguing that it wasn’t even there in the first place.

 

I felt like a sham.  I felt like an island.  I was alone in my shame and in my suffering, because everyone else had their lives put together and I was the only one falling apart.

 

I was the only one falling apart.

 

I got to church that night and looked around.  Everyone was put together and clean and happy.  My issues were being toted behind me like luxury luggage, and no one else seemed to have any baggage at all.

 

I was falling apart: my makeup was streaky and my shoes were literally coming undone at the seams, but everyone else had it together.

 

Everyone but me had it together.

 

But in that weakness, I found a strength.

 

In the messy hair and the puffy eyes and the torn boots, I found a revelation.

 

When you feel like you’re at your wits end, you’re not falling apart, you’re actually falling together.  All the pieces of you— all the things that seem to be collapsing around you— are pieces that didn’t belong.  They are parts that weren’t meant to last.

 

The shaking and the quaking of the chaotic mess that consumes your life is the Lord removing every structure and institution inside of you that doesn’t belong.

 

You feel like you’re falling apart, and in a sense, you are.  You are losing buildings that have been attached to you for a long time, but you are only losing the ones that are not built by God.

 

When I was running out of time and needing help administratively and getting overwhelmed by responsibilities that had piled up, I was losing the parts of me that didn’t trust God.  In the shaking of a chaotic day and week and month, I shook off fear and lack of resilience and fraud.  I left behind petty worries and the part of me that refuses to rest.

 

In the chaos of a messy life with messy problems, I grew, but it was because I lost first.

 

When you feel like you’re falling apart, you’re really just losing the pieces that weren’t meant to stay with you.  You may feel like things are coming undone, and they are, but they’re coming undone so that you can be put back together.

 

In the process of falling apart, you are falling together.

 

Pieces of the enemy and lies of the devil fall away in the process, leaving the pieces of God plenty of room to let everything else fall into place.

 

You might be falling apart, but you’re falling apart so that God can allow everything to fall into place.  In the act of falling apart, you’re falling together.

 

So I encourage you to embrace it.  Embrace the breaking and the shaking and the earthquakes around you.  You need to lose the things that don’t belong.  They are holding you back.  Embrace all of the pieces falling off so that all the pieces of your life can fall together.

 

Rejoice, because falling apart means that you’re one step closer to holiness.  It means that you’re one step closer to righteousness.  It means that you’re one step closer to being finished.  Rejoice, because in the falling apart, all of your heavenly pieces are falling together.

 

And on the days that you can’t, fall together.  On the days when you can’t rejoice, when you can’t embrace, when you can’t seem to find the energy to believe that there is purpose in your pain, know that somewhere, someone just like you is feeling the exact same way.  Fall apart, together.

 

Somewhere, someone is falling apart too. 

 

Somewhere, someone cannot find the hope or the strength or the belief that things are going to get better, and they’re falling apart.  Their houses aren’t clean and their children aren’t behaving and their marriage is ending… somewhere, someone is falling behind in work or in relationships or in life in general.  You might not know them, and they might not share it, but there is always someone who is on the verge of falling apart, just like you.

 

Know that you aren’t alone in the process.  In the process of coming together and collecting all of the pieces of yourself in order to see relief and redemption, you are falling apart alongside other brothers and sisters that are struggling to do the same thing: you are falling together.

 

There is kinship in weakness.  There is community in the act of unifying yourself with God.  Know that when you fall apart, you’re falling apart alongside others who are experiencing the very same things.

 

In the process of falling together, fall together.

 

Don’t fall alone.  Don’t isolate or disengage.  Don’t disconnect from people because your feelings feel like a burden.  Don’t detach yourself because you don’t think that anyone can relate to your struggles and certainly don’t walk away because you feel like you are the only one with problems.  There are people around you who are going through the same things.  Jesus went through some of the same things.  You’re not alone in your breakdowns or your burdens.

 

So be together.  When you’re falling apart, fall together.

 

Fall together— be united in self and one with the heart and mind of Jesus as all of pieces fall into place, but fall together— grabbing onto the hands of those around you who have been where you’ve been.

Fall together by choosing family and friends and unity rather than a life without.  And fall together as all of the pieces fall into place.

 

 We all fall apart.  Let’s all fall together.