Week 1: Introduction — The Broken Way Begins

1.Voskamp opens by describing a scar on her wrist — a mark of years of secret self-harm — and her struggle to believe that broken things can be beautiful or useful. What was your immediate emotional response to that kind of raw honesty from an author? What does it make you expect from the rest of the book?

2.She introduces the central metaphor of eucharist: bread that is taken, blessed, broken, and given. Why do you think she chooses this image as the organizing picture for the whole book? What does it suggest about the relationship between brokenness and gift?

3.Voskamp asks early on whether there is a way to live that is larger than our pain — a way through, rather than around, suffering. Where have you personally tried to go around pain rather than through it? What happened?

4.She frames the book around a question: what if the broken places in us are not the end of the story but the very places where light gets in? How does this land for you — does it feel like hope, or does it feel like a platitude you've heard before? What would make it feel real?

5.In 2 Corinthians 4:7–10, Paul writes about treasure in clay jars — glory carried in cracked vessels. How does Voskamp's introduction connect with Paul's vision of weakness as the carrier of divine power?

6.What brokenness are you carrying into this study — in your life, your relationships, or your sense of God — that you are hoping this book might speak to? (You don't have to share all of it, but naming it, even privately, matters.)

7.Voskamp says the broken way is the way of the cross — that Jesus himself was taken, blessed, broken, and given. How does grounding the book's argument in the life of Christ change how you hear the invitation to embrace your own brokenness?