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When it comes to broken pieces/broken bones/broken hopes & dreams

there is an emphasis on healing, restoring, reclaiming to wholeness. 

 

My wife & I both work in healthcare. She is nurse; I am a hospice chaplain as well as pastor. In addition to providing gentle care & presence in the often painful day to day living for those she serves as their bodies betray them —

she literally binds up wounds & holds space for the brokenness of grieving the loss of independence, the loss of a normal, the grief of what her patients hoped would be. 

 

In my grief work as a chaplain supporting folks as they navigate the hopes, joys, concerns, worries, fears that come with terminal diagnosis — as they knowingly journey toward end-of-life — there is an entire category for pain & symptom management that I am required to document with each visit with every patient. As if all pain can be managed or rated between 1 & 10.

 

And this is holy work. Because it isn’t a fast-paced quick work to fix something, racing through what has been broken or lost. But lingering longer in the loss. Naming, honoring, acknowledging that there isn’t always a quick fix.

 

And to gloss over the discomfort we find in others’ suffering

— minimizes & cheapens that suffering.

 

Instead we are called to make space. To bear witness.

 

So these days in my pastoral counseling I have started asking, inviting my patients to name their grief and loss and to claim where they are finding hope & joy. To give space to honor what’s broken. 

 

We see this desire for mending what’s broken, for quick fixes & easy remedies expressed across cultures, in art & music… in theology too. As we try to understand our human experience & ask what in God’s name is happening. Literally. And where is God in suffering, in the brokenness of the world. 

 

And in music: I can still hear the angst, aching, longing from my middle school years listening to, singing along with “Un-break my heart.” And most recently from Lady Gaga — “I’ll never love again.”

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I did a quick google search to find over 50 songs for a broken heart ranging from Whitney Houston, Lady Gaga, Adele, Frank Sinatra, Prince, Elton John, Joni Mitchell, Sheryl Crow, Death Cab for Cutie, Snow Patrol, Taylor Swift, Chicago. And more. Really who doesn’t sing about broken hearts?

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There is the Japanese pottery art of kintsugi. 

Which I confess I believe to be stunningly beautiful, brilliant, a repurposing, restoring, an entire sermon could be found in the masterful illustration of art & industry combined. 

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I’ve heard it said many times over the years “A broken bone heals stronger.”

It’s said in a way that becomes an imperative for healing from brokenness and that resilience through brokenness makes us stronger, we get through & “get over” our brokenness, rising up with more determination and grit. And though I read an article just today in The NY Times written by an orthopedic doctor that explains why this isn’t in fact medically true — it remains part of our cultural platitudes. Right up there with “everything happens for a reason” and “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.”

 

All well-intended. All wrong.

For where there’s over-simplification or partial truths

there’s a sort of the story we aren’t honoring. 

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It is far more nuanced.

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We go on a journey to find meaning, find a reason,

find a why in the face of unspeakable tragedies & the deepest losses.

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And as for God.

Yes, God redeems & restores us. Yes, God loves us out of darkness into light.

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Yes AND — not — Yes OR.

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God never promised not to give us more than we can handle —

but to be with us especially when it seems everything is more than we can handle.

 

God is close to the broken hearted. God’s promise is presence.

Presence in the broken edges of our stories. 

 

So here is a blessing written without the expectation to rush, to hurry, to heal what is broken. But to let it be. To hear and perhaps even come to believe that you are whole — without any demand or requirement to mend the broken pieces that brought you here. And that claiming the beauty in the broken pieces without the expectation to “fix it” is often part of coming home to ourselves & finding rest for our souls.

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A blessing for what’s broken 

Broken shattered pieces. What seems like yet another failure in ruins at your feet. The jagged edges threaten to piece, to scar, to wound. How quiet that moment is. The resounding silence. The world stilled. A seemingly cruel joke so that all you hear is the wailing of your own heart. As you begin calculating the math of condemnation & feel shame stretching wider to take up more space. 

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Those heavy ceramic plates you carry & juggle so carefully — not with tenderness but with fear of how everything would all fall apart with one single crack — were never meant for you to pick up, to shoulder, to hold onto. When they crack the light shines in. When they fall & shatter into pieces. It is not yet another loss that leads to barren places but an emptying, a releasing toward freedom. Can you see how the journey seems lighter when your hands (your heart) is now open? 

 

For God is near to the broken-hearted. And Love is there to find you. Love. Love stands at the finality of the tomb of all our hopes. And it is Love that rolls away the stone of silence, defeat & despair — even as the tears roll down your face, grief-stricken, scrambling to somehow put the pieces back together.

 

And the Light breaks into the darkest places. And that Light somehow seems brighter after journeying through deep darkness.

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And you see. That Light shines in the darkness.

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And you see. And perhaps even come to believe.

That you are already whole — yes whole & beautiful — without any demand or requirement to mend the broken pieces that brought you here. 

 

Maybe. Just maybe. You can finally let it go, let it fall, shatter into pieces.

Maybe. Just maybe. You can finally see how the light breaks in & reflects beauty, wholeness, enough-ness. 

 

Blessed are you. The heavy-laden. Who can release what you were never meant to carry. Yes blessed are you who can start with a whisper & rise up to a declaration of this truth — that claiming the beauty in the broken pieces without the expectation to “fix it” is making your way out of exile to find your way home to your true self. 

 

And here. In this journey. The broken pieces are beautiful as they are brought into the light. Shame is changed to praise. The lost have found safe harbor. There is sanctuary for all. The exiled are home. And there is rest for your soul. And for mine. Hallelujah and Amen.