Better than Before

I’m cracking up!   And I don’t mean the euphemism that suggests that I am laughing my ass off.  The way my God works, I get messages in all kinds of forms and fashions.  Usually, God gets my attention by sending the SAME message in multiple ways at the same time.   Plainly put, synchronicity gets my attention.  That’s probably because I’ve yet to master the art of slowing down often enough to hear God’s subtle messages.  Generally, God screams at talks to me by way of “themes” if you will.  This time, the theme is CRACKING.

First, one of my molars cracked near an old filling (that I now think I should have gotten replaced much sooner).  I have an entire chunk of my tooth missing and it feels like a nerve is exposed.  When I eat, drink, or rinse, I get a ZING down my gum line and it’s rather uncomfortable.  Thankfully it’s not painful and I have dental insurance.  I do wonder how this is going to impact my Invisalign journey (which could be a blog topic all by itself).  I’m going to the dentist tomorrow to get it checked out. 

Then, less than 24 hours later, my cell phone fell and its screen cracked…and then the crack spread.  This is problematic because like pretty much everyone else, I have a touchscreen phone.  Between the tooth and the phone, I know I have some repairs to tend to ASAP.  The cracking of these important parts of my life, though, reminds me of a lesson I got from a good friend of mine.

There is a Japanese art form called Kintsugi. A simple Google search will quickly inform you that Kintsugi is “the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum”.  In the end, the repaired pottery is more valuable than it was before it was cracked.  This form of art is a lot like recovery. 

Societally, I believe we have come to see chipped as broken… and broken as irreparable… and irreparable as worthless.  But we all have areas of our lives where we have been chipped.  I know there are even areas of my life where I have chipped myself.  I have chipped off parts of me because they weren’t as savory, in my mind, as the parts of me that others seemed to appreciate.  I chipped off parts of myself that I wasn’t ready to accept because I regarded them as ugly.  To be honest, for a very long time, I thought I was broken.  And I internalized that to mean, on some level, I was worthless.
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Recovery has been an unrelenting process for me.  It hasn’t been easy to gather all the chipped pieces of myself and to trust the reparation process.  I’m still very much in the thick of it.  Looking back over the last year or so, I can see though, how my recovery has paid off and I am indeed worth more than I was before the “damage”.  When I learn to “let go and let God”, miraculous things happen.  My areas of brokenness are not only repaired, but they are laced with gold.  The parts of me that I used to think were ugly have been infused with love, patience, compassion, and acceptance.  I am super grateful for God’s Kintsugi art with my life.  I am indeed more precious and more valuable than I was before.