When the cracks are filled with gold...

As I walked along the beach there were hundreds, probably thousands of shells. Actually, there were probably tens of thousands of shells.

Some with beautiful colors, some mostly white.
Some were curved and contoured. Some were mostly flat.

All shapes.
All sizes.

Some were whole, but most were broken. Fragmented pieces of what it once was.

Each with a unique name, but each referred to as a shell by most people.

All together on the beach.

Our lives are like that. We are all broken in one way or another. Our fragmented pieces make up our stories.

Each unique, yet each a story.

Mine is different from yours.

Yours is different from hers or his. But we all have one.

These days I am trying to navigate different and unusual waters. Trying to piece together the broken pieces of some of my story and see what I can salvage.

All of it is good, it just looks different. Like editing a photograph. We can enhance the color, the saturation, the hue…but it is the same picture, just different.

Even my broken places, my sharp edges are good and useful.

They might need editing, but they are useful.

They might need paring down, but they are useful.

While I need may need to edit and pare down, I need to remember that there is beauty in my broken places.

And I’ll remember that beauty is always in the eye of the beholder. What I see as trouble or broken just might be the next thing on the path that leads me to the perfect place.

Kintsugi is a Japanese art form. Broken pottery is put together and the glue used to hold the pieces together is coated or mixed with gold, silver or platinum.

As a philosophy it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object,

rather than something to disguise.

Sometime I think of the changes and broken places in my life as something to be forgotten or discarded. But I should not feel that way. I should recognize that change is part of my story.

Part of His design for my life.

Changes are around the bend. Some I am prepared for and some I am not prepared for.

But I’ll strive to find His grace in the cracks of my story.

I’ll strive to find His love in the ugliness of life.

What do you see in the cracks of your life?

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