Bit by bit

On brokenness + healing

I hear the crash from the other side of the house.

The scene I walk into made the assumption from hearing the unmistakable thud, the scattering of pieces on the tile floor a reality: a candlestick holder was broken.

I do my best to reassure everyone involved. “It’s just a candlestick holder. As long as nobody is hurt, I’m not upset. It can be replaced. It really is okay, I promise.” None of these are lies. I liked the look of the candlesticks on our table, sure. But was it worth being upset about? Not really.

My husband sweeps it all up while I keep the regular evening activities moving. I forget it even happened until, once the bustle of baths and dinner dishes dies down, I find him hunched over the kitchen table with the broken pieces and a bottle of glue.

“You don’t have to do that, really. It wasn’t even expensive. It was just for decoration. I can find another,” I tell him, a little guilty that he’s spending his time on something that seems so insignificant.

“It’s okay. I want to,” he warmly insists. He bends his head back down as he gets back to work puzzling all the broken pieces together with steady hands. The flutter of butterflies, those old friends, fill my chest reminding me of what drew me to him in the first place.

We walk outside and find an empty, wooden picnic table to sit at. Usually our “meetings”, as we jokingly called them, included food or halfhearted attempts at guitar lessons - anything to stay in each other’s company a little longer. But this time was different. This time felt serious.

He looked me straight in the eyes and laid it all out on the table (figuratively, of course).

He liked me. A lot. And he wanted to take our friendship to a more serious, intimate level. You can call it “dating”, or “being exclusive”, or even “going steady” if you want. The semantics of what to call our relationship didn’t matter; he was just ready to be mine, for me to be his.

The problem was my hesitation. We had been going back and forth for weeks, this cat-and-mouse game of “Does she? Doesn’t she?” wearing on us both. It wasn’t him I was worried about.

I was broken and I knew it. My past had changed me and I wasn’t sure I was ready for the vulnerability a real relationship would require. Things were going well for us now without him knowing all the deep intricacies that were tangled up inside of my brain. Why let him in if it would only lead to him running away to find a person less complicated, less scarred? It felt too risky.

His warm smile, the determined look in his eyes told me something different about the made-up scene in my head. Where I imagined him running, my instinct told me he would stay. Where I imagined him buckling under the pressure of my wounded heart, I could see my scars weren’t enough to push him away.

What I saw in his face was love. He didn’t know everything there was to know about me, but something told me he would stick around long enough to find it all out. I would be safe with him.

And so I took the risk. With a chest filled with fluttering butterflies, I told him I wanted the same - I wanted the commitment, I wanted the life he envisioned for us, I wanted him. And now the rest is history.

It’s all come out, the tangling within my brain, slowly but surely as the years have passed us by. Fifteen years of living with the same person, seeing the hidden things in the light of the day-to-day, is a surefire way to allow a person to deeply know the inside parts of you that make you tick.

But I’ve also come to realize that I wasn’t the only broken one entering into this relationship. There aren’t any traumatic, life-changing events that have happened to us as individuals. Living in a broken world leaves us all with jagged edges at one point or another. And as we walk through this life side by side with others whose hearts are a little chipped, those jagged edges are bound to bump into each other, causing more damage.

We can become broken in community, but we are also healed in community. Loving each other, modeling patience, showing grace - none of it is small. The outcome of exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit with each other always leads to healing, bit by bit. He has shown me that same, self-sacrificial love as I have tried to do the same for him. Together, with God, we are slowly becoming whole.

A few weeks before the broken candlestick, we find out more ways this world has hurt us. There are more pieces of our hearts that need glued back together.

And as I watch my husband delicately, painstakingly glue those tiny ceramic pieces back together to remake a candlestick holder, I can see the picture of my Savior doing the same for us. He sees what we were before the impact, He sees what we could be if given the chance, and He works to restore us back to what He intended in the first place. That, my friends, is the work of redemption.

But the thing is, something has to break in order for us to feel what it’s like to be reshaped in the Father’s hands. There is no restoration without there first being a shattering. If you live long enough, you’ll know what breaking feels like. But do you know what it feels like to be reshaped, remade into the vessel God wants us to be?

Thankfully, tiny fragments of a life blown apart by the pains of this world, are not too complicated for the expert hands of Jesus.

“The only way to fight off resentment is to consider that we have deeply offended God, and He did not deserve it. We have done to God what verbal attackers do to us. If we have pains we do not deserve, how much more does the Holy God not deserve the pains of our failure to defend Him and praise Him and follow Him wholeheartedly? Bathe yourself in the gospel of undeserved grace. Watch how your resentment melts.”

Dane Ortlund

the miscellany

All the random things from our past month

• something we’ve been doing: I realize this newsletter is coming at you late. I pretty much skipped the entire month of June and most of July - oops! I had planned to take July off from writing the newsletter (and letting you all know!), but the coming school holidays came barreling towards us and the next thing I knew, it was already July! We had a full two months with celebrating 2 birthdays, throwing 1 birthday party, hosting family and friends, celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary, extra school activities, and traveling to a conference on top of normal church and life things. And in my world, real life always trumps social media life. The kids head back to school for term 3 and the traveling will slow down a bit for us so life will slowly begin returning to normal. Thank you for those who checked in and for your patience while life recalibrates for us!

• something we’re reading: For Mindy: I’m continuing my journey through the classics with Little Women by Louisa May Alcott while also reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis; For the kids: I recently picked up a few volumes of the Imagination Station series secondhand and they’re loving them so far!

• something we’re eating: With the colder, winter weather here in Australia, I have been craving all the usual colder weather food. We’ve been enjoying soups and chilis and pumpkin spice and apple desserts as much as we can before the temps start climbing back up again! These pumpkin pie bars were a big hit for morning tea at church - with homemade whipped topping included, of course!