Broken Is Better

This past week I got invited to go back and visit the recovery group I was a part of for about a year and a half after Cameron’s confession.

It was so good to be with these special women, and during our meeting we made Kintsugi together. Kintsugi is a traditional Japanese art that uses a precious metal like gold to bring together the pieces of a broken pottery item and at the same time enhance the breaks. This technique essentially makes the piece more unique and adds more value to it. If you haven’t heard anything about this, go research it! It’s such a beautiful concept.

While putting these pieces back together with these wonderful women, I couldn’t shake the vision of how God had done the very same thing to me that I was doing to this small clay pot.

Before everything happened three years ago, I was very much like this clay pot before it got broken. I was whole. I was strong. I was on stage leading my church every month. I was a pastor’s wife. I had grown up in the church. I had nearly perfected the art of being a Christian. At least I thought I had.

And then life completely fell apart.

In an instant I went from being the confident, beloved leader on stage at my church to an embarrassed, terrified, angry, confused, betrayed wife trying to find her place in this recovery group. A recovery group that met in another church.

A recovery group that met in the basement of that other church.

At first I resented that they met in the basement. Every week it felt like a harsh, visual reminder of how far I’d fallen. From the stage one Sunday all the way down to the basement by the next Sunday. I’ve never felt so humbled in my life. So exposed. So out of control of my own life. So traumatized.

And right there in those colorful, plastic Sunday school chairs designed for children’s ministry, God began to use his precious healing gold to reassemble the broken pieces of my soul.

Gold that took the form of wise women who comforted me in my pain and made me feel “normal” again. Gold that became incredible resources to teach me the pathway to healing. Gold that was spoken over me in the form of words and prayers.

I met Jesus in that basement in a way that I had never known from the stage.

These broken, traumatized women ministered to my heart in a way that my pastor was never able to. And having my broken pieces put back together by the healing touch of Jesus has made me more whole than I ever felt before my life got smashed to pieces.

Even though I can’t yet say I’m glad all of this happened, I know for sure that I don’t want to go back to who I was before it did. I was too black and white then. I was naive. I was judgmental. I was close-minded. And God keeps finding ways to restore and heal even places that I didn’t realize were broken within myself.

Very much like this pot I put back together this week.

You can still very clearly see all the places that it broke. But it doesn’t look the same as all the other pots anymore. It has the beautiful, bonding work of the gold woven throughout which has taken the place of each broken line. It is complete. It is more beautiful. It is now so much more than it ever was before it got smashed.