Have you ever broken a dish? I certainly have. Once that dish is broken, it ends up in the land of things that are no longer of any use. The trash. A few years ago, I was introduced to Kintsugi. Kintsugi is a Japanese art form that will take broken pottery and fuse it back together by using elements like gold, silver, and even platinum. This discovery was so fascinating to me. Who would have thought it? Take this thing that appears worthless and make it priceless. Ingenious!
The finished product looks intentional. Without being told, I would never have been able to guess which was a previously broken piece of pottery. But before I lose you by delving too deeply into how profound that was for me on a spiritual level, let’s briefly discuss beauty. Have you heard sayings like, ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ or ‘Beauty is skin deep’? Or perhaps you’ve heard ‘Beauty is subjective’. Whatever the saying, they all shed light on the fact that beauty differs from person to person. What is beautiful to me may not be to you. Vice versa. Look at that vase above. If it remains broken, odds are pretty great that it will just end up in the trash. If fused back together with mud or merely glue, would that change the beauty of it? To some. It would certainly even change its worth. Afterall, mud and glue aren’t nearly as valuable as gold and silver.
Thinking about Kintsugi and that process of restoration got me thinking about how similar the process is for my spirit. Broken, like pottery, I can seem worthless. But all it takes is someone that is willing to put the time in to restore me. Suddenly, I’m more valuable in my restored state than I was in my original pre-broken form.
What does it mean to be broken? Growing up in church, there are a lot of sayings that are quoted and repeated or rephrased. But I would sometimes find myself wondering what in the world it meant. Brokenness is one of those things. I understood it naturally well enough. But I struggled with understanding it spiritually. So I decided to explore it a little. The best way to begin is always with a little definition. Broken is a word with several meanings, obviously. One of which is simply something (or in our case, someone) that is damaged. In need of or beyond repair. It can also be something that isn’t working for some reason. There’s a disconnect. That’s easy to see when we think of equipment with dead batteries or a car that lets us down, right? Emotionally, it can be someone who is overwhelmed by sadness or despair. Without hope. Keeping all the different meanings of the word in mind, I began to think about what that meant to me in the spiritual sense. Have I ever felt damaged? Disconnected? Wondering if there was a fault in my prayer and connection to God? Have I ever asked that “Does God hear me?” question? Have I ever been sad or felt hopeless? My answer to all of those was yes. At some point in my life, I’ve experienced all those feelings. All those emotions. But here’s the catch. That was past tense. Do I still have worries, doubts, fears, and all those scary negative feelings? Absolutely yes. I’m human, aren’t I? But every single day that I live I learn to let go a little sooner than I did the last time I experienced that feeling. I would not be telling you the truth if I said that once you embrace Christianity, it’s all uphill. Rosy glasses and rainbows only! That would be unrealistic. The difference is in how I want to emerge as a victor over every one of those emotions. I don’t believe that any of us want to wallow in woe. But it can be such a challenge to rise above emotions that have a tendency to snowball.
The stance I took involved replacing some things in my life that were adding to the woe. For example, instead of griping and complaining about issues at my job, I instead chose to pray. I know that sounds easy, but it wasn’t. To be perfectly transparent, it would be so frustrating for me growing up to hear other people say “just”. Just pray. Just let it go. Just, just, just. Yet, all of my issues seemed like everything except “just”! Knowing that place, I never want to make anyone else feel that I’m belittling whatever it is that they are experiencing. I can only share my own story in the hopes that it will encourage you to continue pressing. My experience involves more than one breaking. It’s because some fears and worries run a little deeper. They require more work to uproot. Yet, each time I learn to trust God more, my confidence in Him grows. So when I used to tap into misery, frustration, or perhaps depression, instead, my first inclination is to pray. To talk to God. That’s because, like the elements of a Kintsugi vase, God is reshaping me with more of Him. So it’s no longer easy to cling to the things that used to be a part of my “whole”. That old binding vanishes when I become broken.
It’s easy to hold on to bitterness. It’s easy to cling to unforgiveness and any other negative emotion. What’s a challenge is to truly let those things, those feelings go. But by doing so, that’s how we truly become broken. The type of broken where God can now fully restore you. Where He can shape and mold you into exactly what He desires for you to be. And you no longer have need of any of that negativity in order to feel whole. Broken, but beautiful.
Stay Sunny!
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