What Can Hold You Together When You’re Broken

Not too long ago, I was opening a box containing a few treasured pieces of china from my great grandmother’s large collection. The initial caution and care I took in unwrapping long sheets of packing paper were bypassed by my growing eagerness to display my treasures. In my haste, a saucer slid from my grasp, breaking in two from the impact. I groaned. A teacup had lost its mate. There wasn’t anything to do, I thought, and prepared to discard the ruined piece. My ever-practical husband (who fixes all the things) stopped me. He’d work on repairing it later he said. Sure enough, he did. And while it wasn’t perfect, it was good enough. It still could hold a teacup, and the teacup could hide it’s glued together seam. 

My other dish dropping dramas have not experienced such promising outcomes. In fact, several pieces of my everyday dishware haven’t fared well at all: plates, bowls, and mugs, shattered and ruined beyond all repair. In those cases, there really wasn’t anything left to do but to be picked up, swept up and carefully discarded, no longer of any use. Utterly broken.

I’ve been feeling pretty broken, too. 

For one, this pandemic has collectively brought on not just a viral sickness, but other sicknesses like fear and disconnect and anxiety. Shouldn’t this all be over already? 

But I’ve been broken by things much closer to my heart. I’m grieving the passing of a friend. I’m grieving relationship struggles. I’m grieving life transitions and the loss of how I had hoped things would be, yet still aren’t. I’m at this weird place in a weird time, uncertain and afraid. I want all the pain of breaking to be over. I want to be whole and useful and of value.

 But all I feel is busted up. 

What can we do with the cracked and shattered pieces of our lives? Our broken shards? 

Do we just lie in ruin, and disuse? Having lost beauty and purpose, do we just lie in some corner of the world waiting to be discarded? 

What do we do with brokenness?

The Japanese have a unique way of dealing with broken things.

Their ancient method of “kintsugi” takes a broken bowl or vessel and makes it whole again using a special lacquer mixed with gold. Gold? Why so conspicuous? Human nature would rather flaws be concealed.

But it’s with intention that the repair is highly visible. There’s zero attempt at disguising what’s holding the fragments together.

To the Japanese, the art of kintsugi is seeing beauty in broken things. Shattered Japanese bowls are made whole again. They are sealed and secured with a substance far greater in value and worth than what they ever were before they were broken.

Flaws are magnified, and made magnificent.

When we’re in a crisis, or in grief, or completely shattered, God uses those things to reveal to us our great need. This desperate place we hit when we realize we can’t put ourselves back together can be the vehicle that drives us closer to Him. 

We’re often too eager to run for the superglue, anxious for a quick fix, hoping to hide what’s wrong, eager to hide the seams, wanting to convince ourselves and those around us that we’re strong enough to hold it together.

But if we take courage, we can hold our shattered places. We can give them to the Lord, and see what He will do with them. Our disappointments, our sorrows, our losses–those things may or may not change. But what changes is us.

Christ is able to mend our fractured pieces together with the purity and strength of a bond He purchased with His own blood. He uses those empty spaces to fill us with more of Himself. Those painful fissures, that feel so empty and raw? It’s more room for Jesus to inhabit.

Christ becomes more of your identity.

We don’t look the same. We’re different. We have visible scars. But now they’re filled with a substance of great value, the beauty of Christ’s presence within us. Our lives are far more beautiful and usable than what they were before.

We don’t have to hide our flaws. And we don’t have to hold ourselves together, because He is holding us. We’re beautifully marked with the evidence of His life within us.