When the cracks come, who doesn’t desire – even demand – to restore what once was?
Nothing is more human. We all long to reverse the damage. We all hold tight to the humpty dumpty hope that everything can be put back together again.
But, as our faith teaches us, transition and change dictate the flow of life. The current of time is just too strong for us to swim back.
And so the repair offered us is not that of returning our lives to their original state but working with what remains to make something new. The shards are not pieces of a puzzle waiting to be put perfectly back together, but building blocks waiting to be molded into a yet to be imagined form.
All of which means that there is freedom in the breaking. The cracks, if we can widen our view, become conduits for creativity. That’s not to minimize the pain involved. And it’s certainly not a way of justifying tragedy as “part of God’s plan.” Rather, it’s a call for us to perceive the broken pieces of our lives as more than just a pile of ruined rubble. “Look closer!” whispers the wisdom within. “That ash, if worked with, can give birth to a Phoenix.”
So, what piles of rubble in your life need revisited? What longings for what was do you need to let go of, so a new story can begin?
And how might you break open even further? Because that’s part of this too, isn’t it? “Your broken pieces are more than rubble” is not the only counterintuitive thing that life wants us to learn about the practice of repair. It also says to us (even though we can barely stand to hear it): “Crack wider!”
As difficult as it is to absorb, it seems we were made to be broken, broken open to be exact. Remember what the Canadian sage said, “Cracks are how the light gets in.”
Broken hearts hurt but they also let in and allow us to connect with the pain of others. Protected hearts may seem safe, but our armor only ends up being a straitjacket. It’s one of the most important but paradoxical spiritual truths there is: Broken people end up bigger people. Because of the cracks in our heart, it becomes capable of expanding. Because we’ve been torn, who we are no longer ends at the barrier of our own skin
It seems this is what it really means to be repaired and made whole.
