Literally Broken: What It Took to Take Recovery Seriously

Most people do everything they can to avoid rock bottom. But sometimes, it takes a violent collision between our pride and our reality to finally wake us up. In Hope for Healing, we frame brokenness not as destruction, but as a turning point—the moment you stop pretending you have everything under control, step out of the self-centered box, and open yourself to true empathy.

The guys in the group are asked to reflect on the best example of brokenness they can think of in their own journey of healing. I always share mine with them, because it is literal as well as metaphorical, and is therefore a powerful way to demonstrate the point.

I started Hope for Healing in late July, 2020, when I had relapsed eighteen months after D-Day. We got to the brokenness chapter in early September. One Thursday night in the first week of that month, I had to do a sleep study. If you’ve never had one, they put you in a surreal room—part hospital, part hotel—and hook you up to a web of wires and monitors. I barely slept. They released me at 7:00 AM, giving me just enough time to run home, shower, and head to work.

When I got home, I found my wife already flooding. A female French-Canadian acquaintance of mine had responded to something I said on Facebook, and had called me "mon ami" (“my friend”). This is very different from “mon amour,” which could be a romantic term. Exhausted, rushed, and stressed, I instantly became frustrated. At that point in my journey, I hadn't yet learned how to handle that level of pressure. My default response to overwhelming frustration was self-harm—beating my head against the wall or pounding my temples with my fists, a reaction that terrified my wife and always escalated the situation.

Trying to escape the pressure, I half-ran to the bathroom. Once out of sight, I started punching myself in the head. Disoriented and moving too fast, I lost my balance, and the bathroom rug slipped out from under my feet.

I fell backwards, hard. Without thinking, I stuck my left arm out to break my fall—and it snapped, right at the shoulder. Broke clean through. My whole arm was hanging from my shoulder by the flesh alone. I screamed bloody murder, and my wife came to help me up. I remember her handing me my arm and driving me to the ER. Unfortunately, rural hospitals often have staffing problems, and this was the Friday before Labor Day weekend. There was no one there who could set my arm, and would not be until the following Tuesday. They sent me home with pain killers, but I had to sit motionless for four days (because the slightest movement was agonizing). My wife had to wait on me hand and foot and help me to the bathroom and back.

When I did get to see an orthopedist, I was admitted to the hospital for surgery to install a steel rod in my arm. I handed my wife my phone as they were wheeling me away, leaving her alone to wait. She went through my phone, which is natural in our circumstances. I had given her all my passwords. What I had not anticipated was her reading through my texts with the accountability partner she had recommended to me, and which we had agreed would be confidential. She did look at them, and as a betrayed spouse, I may well have done the same, and was flooded by the discussions she read.

When I came out of anesthesia, I was greeted by a traumatized wife who now had to act as sole caretaker for the next few weeks for the person who had deeply betrayed her.

And that was the exact week we discussed the brokenness chapter in group.

It got my attention in a way it might not have had it come a few weeks earlier. I was literally broken. Literally helpless. And completely reliant on the person I had betrayed. But I also realized something else.

I’d had a steel rod nailed to my arm, holding it together. It was painful to heal from, agonizing sometimes, and I knew it would leave deep scars. But, once that healing happened, that arm would be much stronger than ever before, and be able to endure much more pressure.

I think that was a turning point for me. I’d agreed to do Hope for Healing to make my wife happy, and to show her I was taking some steps in the right direction, but I had not been taking it as seriously as I should have. I was still deflecting, minimizing, and justifying, thinking this stuff doesn’t really apply to me because, deep inside, I was still telling myself what I had done wasn’t really that bad. But my accident, coming when it did, humbled me. I took my journey very seriously after that. I still had a very long way to go, but it was a start.

How about you? Have you been broken? It is no fun, especially when you caused it yourself. You may not have as literal an example as mine, but I bet everyone reading this can think of a time when they were at that place. The question is, what do you take from it?

When I was young I had a friend and religious mentor who had an affair that became public. He lost his position and was ostracized. I worried about him, but I was also a little hopeful. This man had always had a tendency to be self-righteous and judgmental. I hoped that this experience would humble him and make him have more empathy for others. It had the opposite effect. When allowed to return, he was more judgmental than ever because he was trying to prove he deserved to be back, and that he really was better than those other sinners.

He missed an opportunity to grow, and to truly heal.

Don’t be that guy. If you were unfaithful, pride played a role. Let this horrible, painful fall lead you to a healing that makes you humbler, more loving, and more empathetic.

And stronger.