A partial list of broken things
Broken/reimagined. Photo by Kelly McCrimmon on Unsplash
Here is a partial list of items in my life that broke in the last month:
- the trunks of two handmade wooden elephants (after my child threw them mid-tantrum)
- a couple tips off our artificial Christmas tree (which is only a couple years old)
- my Kindle power button (fixed by percussive maintenance!)
- my routine (ok, that may have always been a fantasy)
- a Lenox serving bowl (I dropped it during Thanksgiving hosting)
- my car key fob (not cool when the battery dies in the middle of the Safeway parking lot)
- the necks of three little mice (summarily dispatched for coming in from the cold and investigating our pantry)
- our doorbell (reasons unclear)
- my patience (with everyone and everything)
- the dry skin on the middle knuckle of my right-hand middle finger (shockingly, not from excessive use)
- my upper left tear duct (intermittently clogged and sore)
- the tire pressure sensor in our 2015 Camry (are we safe? Who knows?!)
- a full third of our plastic food storage containers (I've been wanting to replace them anyway)
- my heart, multiple times (due to accumulated, deferred, anticipated, and sympathetic grief)
As you can see from my parenthetical remarks, a variety of circumstances led to these broken things. Neglect. Accidents. Anger. Overuse. (Or, in the case of the mice, ice-cold malice.) Nothing unites them except the questions their brokenness invites:
- What is easily fixed?
- What is beyond repair?
- What if the answer is neither?
The wooden elephants, for example, require only glue to be whole once more.
The mice ... well, that's a done deal.
But my heart—my tender, shaky, imaginative little heart—is not looking for mending or restoration, because a broken heart is not a damaged heart. On the contrary, a broken heart alerts me that I'm alive, breathing, able to contribute and participate. So each time it breaks, I have the opportunity to find a fresh insight or action that stitches the pieces into a wholly different, beautifully lumpy shape that beats anew, reminding me with each thump that if something as precious as a heart can be reborn, then precious little else in this world can stay broken forever.
Prayer #416: For All Broken Things (Yours, Mine, Ours)
Consider your own list of broken things, and then repeat after me: We are not in pursuit of "working order."
Breaking is our order, is our holy work. We break in order to heal ourselves and the world around us.
Stay tender, broken ones. Stay cracked and fractured. In our shattering may we be made whole.
Amen.
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Looking to cultivate courage in the new year ahead? Check out the chapter titled "Courage: You Want Me to Do What?" in my book, Amen? Questions for a God I Hope Exists, for prayerful and poetic inspiration.