As someone who has logged a lot of time in the coastal waters of Florida, I’ve always enjoyed seeing bottlenose dolphins up close in the wild. That’s one reason I was particularly drawn to the movie Dolphin Tale.

Based on a true story, the film is about a fatherless and disheartened boy named Sawyer who finds great joy and meaning in the rehabilitation of an injured bottlenose dolphin named Winter. Sawyer looks up to his older cousin Kyle—a championship swimmer. But Kyle withdraws from his young cousin after he returns from the military with a damaged right leg.

In a moment of frustration and self-pity, Kyle yells out to one of his doctors that he can’t swim anymore because he’s “broken.” His doctor, who refuses to let Kyle wallow in the waters of self-pity, responds by picking up a drinking glass and dropping it on the ground, shattering it into hundreds of pieces. The doctor then turns to Kyle and says, “Now that’s broken.”

Life in a fallen world will injure us—sometimes very deeply (Psalm 34:17-18). When something painful happens, Jesus doesn’t want us to deny or minimize our hurt (John 11:33-35). Nor does He want us to sink in the waters of despair. He knows we’re hurt, but not “broken.” Not in the complete sense of the word.

The wounds of life don’t have to break our spirit (Psalm 34:20). We can resist the lie that we won’t ever experience meaning or joy again. In time, God can put the wounds of life to work for His kingdom purposes (Psalm 34:22). Allow Him to use your pain to sensitize your heart to what is most important in life. Let Him make you more sensitive to the needs of those who’ve experienced similar heartaches.

NLT 365-day reading plan passage for today: Ecclesiastes 12:1-14