Kintsukuroi

By Esther Wilson

What a beautiful concept kintsukuroi is! That an item can be even more beautiful once it's been lovingly repaired with gold after being broken.

I think God is pretty keen on this concept too! We have all been broken by our pasts in different ways but God's heart is for us, to heal us.

Psalm 147:3 says "He heals the broken hearted & bandages their wounds". 

This verse really speaks to me as nearly 3 years ago, within 3 weeks of each other, my beautiful little baby boy was stillborn and I was diagnosed with a heart condition. My heart was literally broken, physically and emotionally. During this time although there was much pain, there was also much comfort from God, one of my favourite verses became 

Psalm 73:26 "My flesh & heart may fail but God is the strength of my heart & my portion forever". 

He really was and is my strength, I could not do this without Him.

After we lost Seth I read a book by someone who had been through a similar experience, and in it was a bit about smashing a vase or jug and then glueing it back together again as a therapeutic exercise. Sounds pretty crazy and I didn't even consider doing it until recently when I felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to go out, buy a beautiful jug and then drop it onto my kitchen floor. I think my husband thought I had gone completely bonkers! First of all, deliberately breaking something is hard to do, I held the jug out at arms length away from my body but it was so difficult to let go of it knowing that it was going to break (I may have control issues!) Then came the job of looking at the pieces and working out how to put them all back together again, some bits were pretty easy to figure out, others took a bit of time. Using a hot glue gun, being careful not to stick my fingers together or cut them on shards of pottery, I stuck the pieces together one bit at a time, slowly seeing the jug taking form again. 

As I was doing it I thought about how God had gathered all the broken parts in my life and mended them. The process is not easy, it can be uncomfortable and painful but it is worth it. And it's not about pretending we haven't been broken but showing the beauty through our brokenness, God's love and grace shine through the brokenness if we let them.

To anyone else looking at my glued together broken jug it may look a bit of a mess but to me it's beautiful and precious. I googled about broken vases before I wrote this and found a newspaper article from a few years ago about a man who tripped on his shoelaces in a museum and knocked over a 17th century Chinese porcelain vase, smashing it into 113 pieces, oops! A specialist ceramic restorer worked on the vase for three months, she said to the naked eye the vase looked perfect  but experts would be able to see the cracks. What she continued on to say I love, she added "I could cover the cracks but by leaving them it shows that the vase is genuine and gives it authenticity." 

The cracks in my jug are extremely visible, so is the brokenness in my life sometimes, but I'm not hiding it because it shows that I am genuine and authentic and it shows who my God is too. He is my rescuer, my healer, my restorer.