Breakdown or Breakthrough?
Life has a way of throwing us into unexpected moments—ones we didn’t see coming, didn’t ask for, and certainly wouldn’t have chosen. Maybe it’s a diagnosis, a job loss, a broken relationship, or just the weight of everything feeling like too much. In those moments, we have a choice: we can see the struggle as our breakdown, or we can reframe it as the beginning of our breakthrough.
Andrew Ripp’s newest song Breakdown captures this tension so well:
“The breakdown is just the start of the breakthrough / It’s all a part of the making of you.”
I don’t know about you, but I’ve had seasons where all I could see was the breakdown—the loss, the failure, the pain. It felt like everything was falling apart, and honestly, sometimes I wanted to sit in that space and just be frustrated. And while it’s okay to acknowledge the hard, we can’t live there.
What if, instead of seeing our challenges as the end of something good, we saw them as the beginning of something better?
Reframing the Struggle
When the hard times hit, we naturally want to ask, “Why is this happening to me?” But what if we changed the question? What if, instead, we asked:
✅ What is this teaching me?
✅ How could this be preparing me for something greater?
✅ What doors could this be opening that I never would have considered?
That shift in perspective doesn’t make the pain disappear, but it does give it purpose.
The Making of You
I love the reminder in Ripp’s lyrics that our struggles aren’t wasted:
“Oh, the pressure, it’s making diamonds out of dust.”
Hard moments refine us. They build resilience, deepen our faith, and stretch us in ways we never would have chosen but desperately need. When we embrace the challenge instead of running from it, we find strength we never knew we had.
If you’re in a season of feeling like everything is falling apart, I want to remind you: this is not the end of your story. The very thing you think is breaking you might actually be shaping you for something greater than you can imagine.
So today, as you face the unexpected, ask yourself—is this my breakdown, or could it be my breakthrough? The answer might just change everything.
