We were bringing back the location where vulnerable people spent their time. We wanted to revamp a place for people and ideas that wouldn’t be allowed in most churches. ‘Wrecked for the Ordinary’, we called it. Vulnerability was our goal. Our desire was painfully honest Christians willing to be true in all things – every struggle, every setback, every doubt and all our pain.
We searched for men and women too broken for pride to matter any longer. We searched for real people. This wasn’t for the Christian whose only goal was to be nice, to speak religious jargon through fake smiles while suffering in quiet darkness. We called it Wrecked for the Ordinary and it was where vulnerable people spent their time.
We knew what becoming wrecked was all about. We had witnessed pain and we had experienced pain – sharp stinging pain, pain that brought tears, and pain that brought us to our knees. We were wrecked. We were qualified.
Then we heard a story that changed things. It started with a blog comment. It was one of many, but this comment had adjectives like travailed, traumatized and devastated. After further inquiry, devastated evolved to unbearable, and as we listened further, the words changed to phrases. “Hours of anguish.” “More than I can bear.” “I don’t know how to make it.” We realized we had yet to scratch the surface of pain. Maybe we didn’t know what being wrecked was like after all.
We began to ask questions about our own lives and our own painful experiences. To what extent can the world be broken? On what level can someone be wrecked? If we’re broken, how much worse is it for the sex-trafficked woman? If our scarring pain left us wrecked, what about the child soldier? How do we claim to hurt after hearing of a mother losing her child?
We are wrecked and broken, beaten up and bruised, but there is someone more broken. There is always someone hurting more. That’s what wrecks us most of all.
We made a promise to be the Christians that most Christians are too scared to be. We started Wrecked again because although we’re a mess, we desire to figure it out. More than anything, we began writing again because we know there are more like us. There will always be someone with more pain – more wrecked than you. But there is pain and there is quiet and they come together as one too often.
Wrecked is about being willing to deal with our own pain so the one who just lost a child would know she isn’t alone, she’s not the only one struggling, not the only one Wrecked. We’re a community coming together in the realization that sometimes just claiming to know Jesus isn’t enough. For each other, we are true in all things – every struggle, every setback, every doubt and all our pain.