Broken

Last Sunday was my little sister’s birthday. I decided to get her some fairy stuff for her garden. (If you didn’t know, Fairy Gardens are all the rage, according to Global News!) It was the second day after my root canal, and my mouth still hurt. Jed was clingy and insisted on staying with me throughout the day. I was tired and still in recovery mode, but I hauled my butt, and Jed’s teeny butt, down to Art Knapps to see what kind of fairy stuff they had. I agonized between two different options for a good 30 minutes, and finally chose the more expensive one, slightly above my budget, which was this:

We stopped at the grocery store on the way home. I opened the passenger door to get Jed out, and out tumbled the fairy and frog, which smashed on the pavement. “No! No! No!” I shouted as I dove for the bag. But it was too late. I could hear small broken pieces jangling about. I was devastated.

When we got back into the car with the groceries, I could smell a really toxic plastic smell and I wondered what kind of nearby business would be releasing such a toxic cloud on a Sunday afternoon. I worried about Jed being exposed to chemicals. When we got home and I got Jed out of the car, I could still smell the toxicity.

By the time we got settled at home, I had devised an ingenious plan to paper mache over the gaping crevasse in the fairy & frog. But my plan to get to work on the repair was distracted by the fact that I could STILL smell that toxic plastic smell.

It finally dawned on me that it was the fairy/frog that was smelling so toxic. I immediately took it outside and washed my hands. My little sister is an avid advocate for all things natural so I knew there was no point in repairing it. I couldn’t give it to her, no matter what.

So I put it in my little flower-pot garden. Surprisingly, it looks like it really belongs there, broken and all. I really like the broken part of it. Probably for the same reason that this is my favorite rock:

It seems I identify with broken things. There’s something perfectly imperfect in them. I think they are a visual cue to help me see the perfection that God has brought to the imperfect world. And that we are so beyond broken, we can’t function properly without Him in our lives.

Yesterday was my day in court. I got divorced. As the judge pronounced the final order on the dissolving of our marriage, images of my vows flashed through my mind like a hail of daggers slaughtering my heart. This was never supposed to happen. It is the antithesis of the dream. And yet it IS. And it is the right thing for me.

I am broken. Like the fairy/frog. Like the rock. And I am beautiful in that broken state. Perhaps its because what weathers and shatters us also shows what we’re truly made of. It shows a shape, a sheen, a texture that may not have been clear from the polished shell.  It reveals the nature of our structure. We are made in the image of God. As part of us exists in the stuff we create, so part of God exists in the stuff He created. That’s why there’s beauty in the brokenness. It’s the impression of God shining through, making something that might appear imperfect, perfect once again. It is pure redemption. And the real kicker is that its not even that He really fixes what is broken. It’s that He loves what is broken. He embraces it and loves it, and in that loving, it becomes perfect once again. Because it was made to be loved by its Creator.

Man, that blows my mind.

So gather up all the broken things about you today, whether they be character flaws, hurts done unto you, exhaustion, that you need to lose weight, or you have a cavity, a hangnail, a bad back, or whatever, and lift them up to the Creator, and allow Him to love His creation, because that’s what you were created for, however broken you are, just to be loved by your Creator.