I AM broken

The story is told of a 15th-century shogun who had broken his favourite tea bowl. He duly sent it to China for repairs but was disappointed when it came back stapled together with metal pins. So some local Japanese craftsmen came up with another solution and filled the cracks with a precious metal – liquid gold– to bring together the pieces of a broken pottery item and at the same time enhance the breaks. This Japanese art, known as Kintsugi, still continues today and every repaired piece is unique because of the randomness with which the ceramic shatters and forms the irregular patterns which are enhanced with the use of the precious metals. And instead of disguising the broken pieces they are incorporated into the design resulting in something much more beautiful and more valuable than the original!

I wonder why are we afraid of broken things?

Each one of us, in our way, is flawed, or imperfect, because that's what it means to be human. And sometimes we are broken because our world is broken, or we are broken because of our own wrong choices or the behaviour of others.

I don't know about you, but there have been times when I've struggled with my brokenness, perhaps even tried to hide it, to pretend the scars aren't really there. This brokenness reared it's ugly head when I had to wait to be given permission to train for ordained ministry. The sexy term is actually a 'faculty under canon 4C' which states; subject to paragraph 3A of this Canon no person shall be admitted into holy orders who has remarried and, the other party to that marriage being alive, has a former spouse still living; or who is married to a person who has been previously married and whose former spouse is still living'.

As a divorced and re-married woman that process took two years during which time I honestly thought my history would preclude me, because on the application form for ministry was a question I was struggling to answer. "What will be the unique feature of your future ministry?" 
And  it was then that God showed me that my history - my own story of brokenness - would be used to help other broken people in the future. 

Because all of our scars tell a story, and if we let them they can tell the story of redemption, the sometimes painful process of repair that God is slowly doing in us and through us, so that what is created becomes more beautiful than the original.

I was listening to a Big Daddy Weave track recently which said .  . .

If my wounds could tell one story, let it be a testimony
That You don't leave me where I've been
If this is healing, let it begin.

Her one precious life . . .
The stories woven
in between the wounds and the scars.
Skin marred by tales
of loss and love,
of life gone and life given.
Lines forming the shape of a cross.
A narrative restoration perhaps?
Because after every death comes a resurrection.
And this is her hope.