The Broken and the Beauty

So here’s the deal.  I’m not perfect.  I know that probably comes as a shock to you all.  Imagine my shock when I found out.

But seriously. I’m broken.  My guess is that you are broken too.  Because in this great big world of ours, the one thing we all have in common is that we are undeniably, irrevocably broken.  Some of us are good at hiding it.  Some aren’t so good.  Some of us have blogs and we broadcast it to the world.  But noticeable or not, broken we are.

And we don’t like that.  We like nice and neat packages.  We like lives that we can look at and say “that was good.”  We like being able to ignore the bad and pretend it away.  It’s easier.  It doesn’t make us think too much.  It doesn’t make us open our hearts.  It allows us to stay who we are and believe what we believe.

But the thing is that it’s not true.  It’s a facade.

I used to worry that I was a bad person.  Not a person who did bad things or even a person who did really bad things.  I thought I was bad.  Down to my bones.  Down to my soul.  And slowly I began to listen to the advice of another who would say that none of us are good.  None of us are bad.  We are all a mix of both.  It’s what we focus on that will determine the way we view ourselves and our world.

And I believe that.  I now believe that with every ounce of my being.  We are all a mix.  We are all part beauty and part beast, part rose and part thorn, part broken and part holy.

The really beautiful part of life, however, is that wonderful things can grow from the holy but wonderful things can sprout from the broken as well.

After a long morning, I pulled into my driveway, and I walked around to get my mail.  We just moved into this house in January, so we don’t know quite what to expect of the bushes and the sprouts.  I was turning the corner, feeling a bit bad because a couple of the bushes look like they won’t be revived when I saw a single red rose sprouting up from one of them.  From the broken parts came life.

We are all broken.  And that is absolutely fine because broken things can be fruitful.  Brokenness can teach empathy and forgiveness and self reliance.  It can teach us to love before expecting love.  It can teach us how words work.  It can teach us that legacies can be beautiful.  And it can inspire us to make ours even more so.

We all have a purpose in this world.  Some of us were meant to rule this world with kindness and compassion.  Some were given miraculous platforms and the perfect soil and just the right amount of rain and sun, and they have taken it all and created a masterpiece.

Some people weren’t so lucky.  Some people were dealt hardships and had the misfortune of having a broken that was a little easier to see than others.  But we were all put here and we were all put here for a purpose, and maybe some of us have the unfortunate task of having a purpose that didn’t lead to parades and fanfare.  But that doesn’t mean the purpose was less meaningful or the beauty less profound.

I’m not arguing here for moral relativity.  I’m just hoping that we remember that we all have holy in us.  We all have beauty.  And that while we might be attracted to the rosebush, our prayers and our compassion also need to go to the broken.

We have our broken.  Everyone does.

But let’s try to remember the beauty and pray for the beauty and trust that the beauty wins in the end.

One day our pieces will be mended, our broken erased, our trials cast to the side.

One day we will be perfected.  One day pain will cease.

For now, I just pray for us all, living and deceased, that we find mercy and grace, and that we are able to look at and remember people through the eyes we wish them to see us through.