The Word That Broke Me and Made Me Whole

The law of the Lord is perfect, it revives the soul. I know this now not as an idea, but as something lived and suffered. That Word has crushed me. It stripped me of every illusion I held about myself: my wisdom, my strength, my so-called holiness. I once thought that the Word of God would make me strong, that it would lift me into light and peace. Instead, it exposed me. It broke me open and showed me what I had never wanted to see. And only there, in that wreckage, did I begin to understand mercy.

“The rule of the Lord is to be trusted; it gives wisdom to the simple.”  I was not simple. I was clever in my religion, skilled at using words to shield myself from the gaze of God. I prayed, read, taught, and spoke beautifully of humility while clinging to pride. But the Word has its own honesty; it does not flatter or negotiate. It entered like a knife and laid bare what was false. It showed me that my strength was a mask, my obedience half-hearted, my discernment a tower built upon sand.

When the psalmist says “the command of the Lord is clear; it gives light to the eyes,” I think of the first time I saw my blindness. The light was unbearable. I wanted to hide, to justify myself, to retreat into old habits of self-protection. But there was nowhere to go. The Word that condemned me also held me in place. I saw that it was not anger that pressed upon me; it was love, fierce and consuming, the kind that will not let a man remain a liar even to himself.

“From hidden faults acquit me.”  Those words became my only prayer. I had thought my sins were few and my intentions good. But the Lord’s gaze reached deeper, past what I could name or confess, to the tangled roots of self-will, fear, and self-love. It was not a gentle revelation. I felt myself unravel. Yet even as I broke, something within began to breathe again. The Word that wounds also heals; the same light that blinds the proud gives sight to the contrite.

St. Isaac says that humility is the raiment of divinity. I understand now why the saints clung to it with such desperation. Without it, one cannot bear the truth. To see oneself as one truly is, without despair, is already a miracle of grace. When God’s law came to me, it was not as an external code but as Presence: a living fire that demanded everything and yet gave everything. The Cross ceased to be a symbol; it became the shape of my life.

I have no confidence left in my discernment or my virtue. I know too well how easily the heart deceives itself. “From presumption restrain your servant,” the psalm says and I beg for that restraint every day. I do not trust my own thoughts. I do not trust my own comfort. What I trust now is the mercy that never turns away, even when it must first wound.

And yet how sweet that mercy tastes after the bitterness of pride. “They are more to be desired than gold, and sweeter than honey.”  When I finally stopped defending myself, when I allowed the Word to do its work, something new was born. The same commandments that once felt heavy became light, almost tender. To obey is to breathe again. To repent is to rest. The fear of the Lord became not dread but clarity, the freedom of standing naked before Love and being unafraid.

Now I know what the psalm means when it says, “May the spoken words of my mouth, the thoughts of my heart, win favor in your sight.”  Every word I speak now passes through that fire. I try to let nothing escape the crucible of silence. I have learned that truth spoken without purification wounds, and silence kept without love suffocates.  So I beg the Lord daily: let my words be few, my heart contrite, and my life transparent before You.

The perfect law of the Lord revived me, but only after it killed what was false.  It broke me down to dust so that mercy could build me again.  Now, when I pray, I do not reach upward as I once did. I fall downward into the hands that have already caught me.  The law that once condemned me now sings within me.  It is Christ Himself, the Word who became flesh, the Light that burns and heals.  I have learned that the fire of His truth is the same as the warmth of His love.  Blessed be the Lord, my rescuer, my rock, who breaks hearts only to make them whole.