As a military wife, I have collected unique pots and planters from every corner of the globe—delicate and beautiful reminders of where I have belonged over the years, which justify their place in our limited space through sheer practicality. Over the years and the myriad of moves, most of them have gotten cracked and chipped and some have even come off the moving truck in pieces, looking nothing like the functional plant holders they once were. I have tenderly held onto the cracked ones, gingerly filling them with dirt and new plants, and positioning them so the cracks were out of sight. The pieces have piled up in a rubber tote, like a fractured collection of years, seeking purpose and waiting for inspiration to bring them new life. They still hold meaning and significance for me, but I just wasn’t sure if they could still be beautiful and serve a purpose.
Recently, as I was scrolling through ideas to breathe life into my arid Arizona “gardens”, I stumbled upon a tutorial of someone making broken pot planters.
I watched, as step by step, she took chunks of broken pots and nestled them one inside another, creating a mosaic of vessels. As I watched her assemble her jigsaw garden, fitting one fractured piece beside another, I realized I was witnessing the redemption of brokenness into beauty. I felt God stir in my soul.
That’s our life sometimes, isn’t it? We work and hustle and build our lives to be beautiful, purposeful, productive vessels for God’s calling, and then we come through a season that cracks us, chips away at our certainty, and leaves us broken with jagged edges. And when we look up from the struggle, catch our breath from the pivot, or take inventory after the storm we don’t even recognize what we see. The girl in the mirror looks jaded, her hope is faded, her face is strained and her spark is drained. Suddenly, what we have gone through causes us to question if we can ever be whole or useful or beautiful again. Most desperately, will we ever reclaim our joy?
On its own, a broken pot cannot hold anything the way that it was designed to. Sometimes we feel like the things we’ve walked through, the experiences we have had, even the choices we have made, leave us less than whole. The narrative we tell ourselves is, “ This part can never be redeemed. This part will never be useful. This part should just be discarded. This part will never be beautiful.”
It’s a big. fat. lie.
Jesus was nailed to the cross. His body was broken. It was messy and jagged and as people watched, they just couldn’t understand why it was happening. They knew him to be a teacher, a leader, a listener, a healer, and in those dark moments which turned into dark days, they couldn’t see how any kind of purpose or joy would come out of the brokenness they witnessed and lived through. When they looked at him on the cross, they didn’t see how anything good could come from the suffering.
But, three days later, their joy—full and complete and defying literally all the odds (including death)—returned. Three days later, the darkest night, the deepest suffering, the most broken moments, became the foundation for the best day ever.
This is God’s gift to us.
We come with this pile of brokenness.
And we weep because it feels hopeless, helpless, and joyless.
We weep because we can’t see a way back to being delighted with this life, these gifts, and our purpose. We weep because we believe that joy lies in captivity on the other side of being able to fit everything back together perfectly.
And God says, no.
Dear, sweet, child, no.
Joy comes from the promise of this brokenness coming back together in new, unknown, and powerful ways.
Joy comes from the promise that while we may get chipped and cracked and broken under pressure, He is unchanging, steady, and faithful.
Joy comes from the sweet relief of surrendering that rubber tote full of broken pieces to the only one who can truly redeem it.
I watched that tutorial three times just marveling at how masterfully the broken pieces were fashioned together. What seemed like a pile of useless pottery became the beautiful centerpiece of the garden.
I dragged out my tote full of half pots and jagged pieces and a fresh bag of dirt, and felt my heart swell.
And heaven whispered,
This is MY joy, to redeem what is broken and make it beautiful.
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