beauty in broken

 The Japanese art of Kintsugi has been significant for me in the past years. 

Are you familiar with it? It comes from a tradition of seeing beauty in brokenness. Pottery that has been broken is repaired and put back together with an adhesive mixed with gold or silver powder, thus highlighting the cracks and making the end result more valuable than it was previously. 

Wow. To think that God may restore my brokenness into something more beautiful and more valuable. That's huge.

Then last week I attended a debrief retreat, reviewing and reflecting on the past few years, and toward the end of the week we entered the session room to find a small ceramic pot in front of each of us.  ➜

The task:
break the pot and put it back together in whatever shape or form we are led to, and then paint the cracks with gold or silver. All the while using it as a contemplative exercise, asking God what he might want to say through this process. I'm familiar with this art but have never physically done an exercise like this. So immediately I have in my mind an image of the pot broken in manageable 8-12 pieces, put back together to create a whole piece and beautifully outlined. You know, images like this: 

That's not what happened. I threw my pot (it was in a bag to keep pieces contained) against a cement porch, and it shattered. SHATTERED. Into umpteen pieces and shards everywhere. You can see my reaction here:

Very telling, my reaction. Dismay. Overwhelm-ment. Those visions of beautifully put-back-together pots immediately destroyed.  An expression of some of the things I have been feeling about life. And as I went through the process of piecing back together, God spoke in even more significant ways than I had experienced with this imagery previously. Because I had already been reflecting on feeling broken throughout the week. Already asking what glory God wanted to reveal out of the feeling of being pulled apart. So this was another piece of him speaking into what I was experiencing.

This is what I journaled:

Broken. Smashed. 
    Into many more pieces than hoped for.
    Shards, some impossible to piece back together.

Shock. Dismay.
NO!!!

Images of beautiful golden-lined pieces pieced back together destroyed.

Gather the pieces. As many as look realistic to jigsaw back together.

Overwhelm-ment. Is this even possible?

Hands gather two pieces. Try this angle. Try that.
    In my humanness, struggle with the puzzle.
    But the Maker knows exactly how they fit.

Regardless, patience.
    Glue, press together, lay it down, wait.
    This piece? No? This piece? No.
    Here's one. Yes! Progress.
        Ok, now this other piece fits.

Gently, patiently. Excitement in the progress.
Joy in the coming together.

Pieced back.
    Sometimes almost seamlessly, the crack imperceptible.
    Sometimes with gaps; missing pieces and missing shards.
        But that gap, that hole - that's where the light will shine through.

This is a process, this reshaping. Repair.

"Do you trust me? Trust that out of shattered, what is coming WILL be beautiful?" 

It doesn't look like it in the process.
It's rough. Raw. Slightly misshapen. The pieces don't line up.
    Obviously shattered and repaired.

But wait for it.

GOLD

Illuminating the cracks. Transforming them into beauty.
Highlighting imperfection. Giving it value.

This vessel treasured in the brokenness and reshaping.

This vessel a Masterpiece.

But this beautiful treasure is contained in us—cracked pots made of earth and clay—so that the transcendent character of this power will be clearly seen as coming from God and not from us.

2 Corinthians 4:7, The Voice