Thirty-One Things - Break

Break

On my piano sits a beautiful, but broken, piece of pottery.  A pitcher you might say.  About 18” high.  Once a bright aqua with sunflowers painted on it.  Now it is faded, marred, scratched, and glued back together.  It actually had come apart into two pieces.

This pitcher was a visual of my life and my husband’s before each other.  We used it in our wedding as a symbol.  Married later in life, we came to each other not unlike this broken pottery.  Separately we came with our own disappointments, failures, trials, struggles, and stumbles.  We both had disability invade our lives.  We had regrets and things we might have changed in our past if we could. We were convinced that only God could have put each of us back together.

The truth is, I found this pitcher at a yard sale for two bucks.  Ed and I broke it and put it back together.  Far from perfect, it was beautiful.

Far from perfect, God took two individuals, broken, and put each one back together separately by His healing grace and unconditional love.  The healing process was painful, having God set in place what was broken.  Then rehab followed. It was a long road and neither of us had a clue that we would meet each other at the end of it.

Ed and I found each other…with our limps and scars…grateful we had surrendered to the Potter’s hand and gone through the process of his restoration long before we knew each other existed.

The broken pitcher sits on display in our living room.  It would hold no real significance without the meaning behind it.  God’s restoration of our brokenness in His firm but loving way is a miracle of grace.  Brokenness is the road to healing.

God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, 

broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, 

broken bread to give strength. 

It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. 

It is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns 

to greater power than ever. - Vance Havner