Broken Yet Loved Carol Harrison

I could never be described as a minimalist for I love to be surrounded by items that remind me of family and friends, lessons and days gone by. Sharing the stories behind my collections gives enjoyment and becomes inspirational anecdotes when I speak.

One of these little trinkets belonged to my grandmother. She received a little pair of white, ornamental china shoes decorated with pink and blue china roses where the ties or laces should have been. She enjoyed the gift because they represented the love of her daughters who gave the gift but also because of their prettiness.

My grandmother set the pretty little shoes on a shelf to be
admired until one day, a few years later, my grandfather used
them to entertain the granddaughter they both loved deeply.

Grandpa decided to dress my doll in the best finery he could find. He took those cherished china shoes and attempted to place one on the doll's foot. It did not fit but he kept pressing harder as he tried to make it work. The shoe broke into pieces - ruined.

But Grandma replaced the good shoe on the shelf and picked up the broken pieces. She glued them together, restoring the shoe as close to its original shape as possible. Then with great care she placed it beside its mate.

Years passed and the glue in the cracks turned brown with age. Grandpa passed away. I grew up and had children of my own. She told the story of the little ornamental shoes and the reason for the brown tinged cracks over and over.

The time arrived when my grandmother needed to move to a smaller apartment. She sorted her treasures and the lifetime of memories they represented. She took those little shoes from the shelf and asked me, "Would you like these? Well at least the good one. I supposed I should've thrown the other one out years ago but couldn't make myself do it. Maybe now it's  time."

"I want them both grandma. The set needs to stay together just the way I remember them. The story and memory wouldn't be the same if I only had the unbroken one."

I received the pair of china shoes and a huge hug that day. Now they sit on a shelf in my home and I tell the story to my grandchildren who never had the privilege of knowing this wonderful woman.
Every time I look at them I am reminded of my grandparents and their love.

I am also reminded how imperfect we all are but how God does not throw us away. He waits for us to give him all the broken pieces of our lives. Then he mends them together with His amazing love, mercy and forgiveness. We might look at all the mends in our lives and see flaws like the brown of the glue but God sees us like the first little unbroken shoe - whole and perfect because of the blood of Jesus. We are broken yet loved by God more than we can comprehend.

Carol Harrison is a speaker, writer and educator  from Saskatoon, SK. who believes we all need to be continuously learning and growing. She uses the power of story to encourage, help people find their voice and offer a flicker of hope in life's choices, changes and challenges.

http://www.carolscorner.ca

A Tale of Two Clocks by Peter A. Black

By the time my parents and sisters arrived home the clock was still in pieces. I reckon this was the inception of my ‘fix-it career,’ when as a nine-year-old I was off school with flu’ (at home alone – yep, that was both common and allowed then).

The clock’s demise came once I’d begun to feel better and my eyes alighted on the wind-up alarm clock. A sudden brainwave: That clock needs fixing! It keeps losing time. . . Yeah, and the bell inside  sounds dull, as though something’s blocking it? And so, I started the job that ended in disaster.

A brand new wind-up Westclox “Baby Ben” alarm soon took its place. Fifty years later in 2004, my sisters entrusted it to me following our Mom’s death – and it still works!

I’d win no prize for best fixer-upper and handyman. Even so, I’ve tackled various fix-it tasks around the numerous homes my Beloved and I have shared over almost half a century. My attempts haven’t always worked out well, but good advice from experienced folk has rescued quite a few projects.

Recently I was at it again. We have a small glass-mounted Seth Thomas clock bearing an “In Appreciation” plaque inscribed to us; a gift from a former congregation. It always lost time but had no control for increasing its pace. We fed it quality batteries, yet the thing would stop after only a few days. Lately my Beloved suggested we scrap it.
 
Reluctant to do that, and curious, I decided to give the clock one more chance by opening it up. No harm done if I couldn’t make it work or get it back together; it was otherwise doomed, anyway. However, my layman’s eye couldn’t spot anything wrong with the innards; everything appeared pristine. I couldn’t even see a speck of dust inside. To be sure though, I air-blew then reassembled it.

My heart sank. Left on the bench was one small cylindrical pin, three millimetres long by about one millimetre wide. I’d no idea where in the clock that tiny piece belonged. With resignation I put batteries in and set the hands to the time. That clock has kept perfect time ever since and is still going – I just checked! Perhaps that piece had been an obstruction.

My boyhood inquisitiveness has never left me. A child’s inquisitiveness must have suitable outlets for learning and creativity to blossom. Of course, monitoring to ensure safety may be necessary, depending on the activity. Even so, it often seems that life randomly casts many of its best, if not risky, learning opportunities. Still, inquisitiveness can lead us into trouble, as our human progenitors found out; the rest is history.

Credit: Free Google Images

Humpty Dumpty was all head. He sat high, perched on the wall, but then he had his great fall. For him there was no recovery, for “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.” Pride is an obstruction. Wisdom tells us, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. Better to be lowly in spirit and among the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud” (Proverbs 16:18-19 NIV).

Now is the time.

The pre-Easter Lenten season offers a spiritual space and time to acknowledge our own prideful falls, our weakness and brokenness.

My hope and prayer is that you and I will experience more fully the forgiveness and healing of our hearts and minds, and the wholeness God has secured for us through our Lord Jesus’ sacrificial death and His blood shed for us on the cross.

 

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Peter is an author, inspirational columnist and songwriter living in Southwestern Ontario. He enjoys singing and playing sacred music and praise songs – especially for his friends in a number of residential care facilities and in area congregations.

~ Raise Your Gaze ... Mindful Musings of a Grateful Heart

~ Parables from the Pond

raisethegaze@execulink.com

 

Fine China & Broken Dreams - Austin

Dreams are baffling things. Like high quality china they have a strength that defies logic. Yet after years of bumps and bangs that suggest they are indestructible, one little tap from just the wrong angle can shatter them. A friendship that stubbornly refuses to give up on someone is much like that. It will absorb the battering of hard use over the years. It might show a chip or two along the rim. But the strength seems imperishable.

My wife commented recently that I was a Good Friend to him. Strange that I feel so little except emotional exhaustion. I wonder if a china cup feels the hair-line cracks before the last bump that finishes it? Does a piece of pottery fear the end as it draws closer? Or does it just determine to hold one more cup of coffee and do its best not to spill?

More than 20 years have passed since I first found myself compelled to believe in him against evidence that even then proved hard to look beyond. As Best Man at his wedding I have stood beside him. I've seen him become a husband--in name. I've seen him become a father--in name. I've seen enough glimpses of strengths and qualities to keep the dream alive; that some day he will grow up, someday become a real man, a real husband, a real father. Yet somehow these last days have poured boiling water into a cup with too many hair-line fractures. I feel brittle and fragile. I fear the one who looks to my friendship as one of the very few constants in his life is about to be scalded.

I've watched other dreams die, ached as I gave up trying to hold the shattered pieces together. Why does this dream, which has cost so much and given so little--feel so much more critical? Can someone put this piece of battered pottery back in the kiln and fuse the hair-line fractures together once again? If that is even possible, do I have the courage to face the heat?

I've watched and marveled several times when I've been too drained to give anything more. Someone else has always stepped in for a few days until I have healed enough to take up the task again. Yet each time the healing takes longer. The hair-line fractures seem to grow wider. I feel more fragile, more brittle.

So many of the people who have helped in the past have been burned one time too many. Why do I almost envy their ability to walk away? Why can't I do the same?

My mind is drawn to a story of a church with incredible stained-glass windows intentionally shattered during World War II. The shamefulness of that act wounded countless people. Yet the shattered fragments now draw visitors from around the world to gaze with awe at beauty brought out of tragedy. Can I dare trust God as I come ever closer to my breaking point? It may be that just one more tap will finish the shattering, leave the dream in fragments I can no longer hold together. God hasn't given up on my friend. Can I dare trust my breaking into His hands? Can I dare offer that breaking to Him and continue to act in love?

If human hands can take glass shattered in mockery and remake something of incredible beauty from it, what can God do with my brokenness? Perhaps very soon I will see. And in that hope there is enough healing to give of myself again, even if it is for only one day more. I have a long, long ways to go before I will ever have given as Christ gave.

Encouragement? Yes! I need it. But the praise that sometimes comes sits heavy on me. I don't feel like a good friend. I feel like kicking him each step around a long country block. I feel like crying. I feel like quantifying the hurt that so many of those close to him have borne because of his choices, putting it all into words and pounding him with it. I feel like walking away and pretending I never knew him.

But God keeps loving him. But God won't let me off the hook. But God keeps calling me to put hands and feet to His love--and He keeps infilling when I'm sure I'm drained dry.

But God. . . How do I get past that? I pray I never get past it, even as tears crowd close.

I no longer have much confidence that my friend will ever change. I don't have confidence that my breaking, which seems so close now, will tip the balance. I have full confidence though, in the relentless love of God. Like The Hound of Heaven, I've watched that love pursue this man for 20 years. And even as I spill my frustrations, there's the sense of a hand on my shoulder and a quiet whisper, "For 20 years I've been painting a picture of my love for you. Are you finally beginning to see it?"