My seven-year-old carefully carried her treasure home in a simple paper bag, wrapped at the store with ribbon and dried sage. She’d found a fairy, a tiny doll with white lacy wings and a halo of silver tinsel. It was cheap, but to her it was priceless.
She played with it for a few days then set it down in the wrong place.
When she was gone one morning, her sister brought me the treasured fairy doll in two pieces. In her three-year-old clumsiness, she’d broken off one of the hands.
I subtly hid the broken fairy before I could get to the store for super glue.
Gluing it back on I realized it didn’t sit the right way on the tiny arm. The resin had cracked in an obvious bracelet around her wrist. Hope would know immediately that the hand had broken off. And before I would explain, she would understand exactly who the culprit was.
To a seven-year-old, brokenness, even in the face of repair, somehow signifies worthlessness. Who knows if the hand won’t just fall off again because the glue isn’t strong enough? Or the slightest touch in the right place might send it sailing to the carpet. And plus, it just looks bad, Mama…
It just looks bad. She’s right.
Brokenness does look bad. And in the case of fairy hands, brokenness IS bad too.
But with the human heart considered, brokenness is better than the strong, firm hold of something that hasn’t been crushed and bruised at the feet of an Almighty God.
And this is the irony of Christianity.
What is weak is strong.
What is last is first.
What is broken is whole.
She will continue to play games with her dismembered fairy, and after a few days, that hand might find a home in the back of the junk drawer. And Hope might wish she had a doll with a matching set of arms. And she’s right, broken toys are no fun.
However, hearts are a different matter altogether.
At the height of our healing process, Chad said to me, “You can’t help but love a broken heart.” We are drawn with compassion toward brokenness and humility almost without being able to stop.
And I believe God always draws close to the broken.
Broken is scary and sometimes ugly, but it is at this place that God meets us.
