If Only a Hug Could "Fix" Us

I'll admit, I used to love this quote. Used to. It just sounds so nice, doesn't it? Someday you're going to find someone who is going to hug you (not necessarily love you, care for you, protect you, respect you, honor you...just hug) so tight that it is going to "fix" all of your brokenness. Well apparently, based on this quote, I just was never hugged quite right. I guess. Because after all the hugging I've done, I am still broken. And because I am a human being, I will remain broken until the day I die.

We are all broken. I don't care who you are or what you've been through...you are broken. Whether you admit it or not, you are. Don't shoot the messenger, I didn't make up the rules. If you're a human you're broken. It's a fact. 

It sounds really simple that all we have to do is find the right person to "hug us" and put all our broken pieces back together. Sounds like a fairy tale to me. It also sounds like a very unrealistic and therefore, dangerous, expectation to put on another person, especially if you're hoping to have any kind of healthy relationship with that person. The idea of expecting someone else to fix your brokenness seems to be a quick path towards disappointment and discouragement. Another human (broken themselves) can never hug you tight enough or do anything else, for that matter, that will ever, ever, fix your brokenness. 

How do I know? I've tried it. I've also tried loving someone enough to fix their brokenness and that doesn't work either. You cannot fix another person and another person cannot fix you. Healing our brokenness is something we must do for ourselves before we can ever be ready to be in a healthy relationship where we are not dependent on another person for our happiness. 

Healing is not easy. It's a lot of hard work. It's painful to address the things that have caused our brokenness but it's the only real way that we can find healing, and in our healing be healthy enough for a relationship where we're not expecting our partner to "fix" us. I have learned the hard way that the only way to heal is handing over every single piece of myself that is broken over to God and let Him deal with me, broken piece by broken piece. 

A tight hug from just the right person that would glue us back together and make us whole sounds like a really cool thing but it's not reality. Another person can never fix what's broken in us. Until we stop expecting others to heal us and make us whole we remain broken in a very dysfunctional way.