A couple of posts back I shared with you the story of my drop and break and want to thank all those who shared with me the impact that post had on them. What I did not do was tell you the second part of the experience. I just now realized that although I wrote this down a week later, it was not published (that should tell you something about my social media prowess hahahahahaha). So here we are with the second part of that experience.
Four days after my symbolic plate shattering I went into my kitchen and decided it was time to pick up the pieces of my broken plate which as you remember from the last post were too numerous to count. Some of them were too tiny for the naked eyes to see but all that I could see, I picked up and put into a plastic bag getting ready to put them in the trash. But right in the middle of that, I sensed a need to try to put them back together. Apart from some three larger pieces which could come together neatly without much struggle, the rest could not. I tried and tried but the picture below shows the plate as close as it could get.
P.S: The photo I used in the last post was not my picture because my pieces were too far apart for my camera to capture.
These pieces still sit in my apartment in a little corner that has become a sacred spiritual marker in my journey. I call it my altar of brokenness and its significance lies in two things; (1) It is a constant reminder that regardless of how hard I try I cannot put life’s pieces together in any meaningful way; (2) It reminds me of the gentle whisper I heard in my kitchen those weeks ago as I tried to put back the pieces together and was getting frustrated that nothing good could come out of them. “I can put those pieces back together. Let me,” He said. And so time after time when I visit my altar of brokenness, one or more pieces fall in place as evidence that the Lord is still doing His work in me. He will not stop until I go home to be with Him forever but while I am on this side of eternity, even if I look totally out of order to me, I will always remember that He’s still working on me.
Do you know that God is able to put the pieces of your life back together? Do you know that He not only is able but actually wants to put the pieces in your life back together? To what degree are you letting Him do that with the broken pieces of your life. Funny how sometimes we put so much effort into trying to look like we have all our pieces together in perfect alignment when we all know that that is not true right? Through this journey, I have learnt not just that there are many pieces in my life that are out of order but also that I suck at trying to put them together or pretending that I have them together. So I quit trying.
If you see the broken pieces out of alignment, that’s because that’s all I am – a bundle of broken pieces with no hope of ever doing anything useful on my own. But before you judge and condemn me as useless, remember that I am a work in progress and because the master architect who put the stars in their place and holds every created thing together in the universe is still working on me, even those broken pieces cannot hold me back. Never underestimate the value and capacity of a broken life in the hands of the most skilled craftsman all of creation has ever known.
He is able to make the most beautiful things out of the broken pieces because I am letting Him do His thing with me. Thus steadily and sometimes unnoticeably, He is carefully picking up the pieces of my life and putting them together the way He wants me to. Will you give Him your broken pieces and let Him make the most beautiful thing you will ever behold out of them?
Broken pieces in the hands of the most skillful Craftsman of all time – that’s me!!! 🙂
Journey with Della 