broken for the light to shine

I want to tell you about my broken pitcher experience.

       I had read about someone who purposely broke something just to glue it back together and spent the time in prayer and I thought they were a little odd.  I preferred sitting quietly sipping hot chocolate, but if shattered porcelain is what brought them closer to God I was going to try not to judge too much.  Then one night I felt that tugging at my heart.  That familiar, un-ingnorable, nudge from the Spirit that I needed to do this.  Seriously? I gotta go break something? Mostly out of curiosity I gave in and picked out a pitcher I never use. I got the sense that God was teaching me something through this, somehow this white and yellow polka dot pitcher represented me.  Curiosity turned to anticipation as I prepared myself for a lesson.   
       God started working through it before the thing even shattered. I grabbed the pitcher and held it for a half an hour before I threw it down. I stood there in my kitchen concerned about what my neighbors would think, being the new kids on the block and smashing things on the porch at 11 at night seemed like a legitimate concern.  
"Which relationship is more important, your neighbors or your Creator?"
So to the porch I went.
I stood there with the pitcher in my hand and I thought about what it meant to throw it down- this thing symbolizing me- and what it would mean to put it back together.  I didn't know what it meant to be broken and rebuilt by God and I wasn't sure I was really up for it.  I prayed a little and finally the pitcher flew out of my hand and broke against the concrete.  I brought it back inside and started arranging the pieces. The bottom had remained intact and I was quite pleased as it would make my reconstruction that much easier.  As I held it, the foundation of what would hopefully be the rebuilt pitcher, I felt God telling me it wasn't ready.  I couldn't be put back together yet, I hadn't given my all to Him. He required complete surrender, no holding back. I needed to be broken even more.  Back to the porch I went with the biggest intact piece of what used to be my pitcher and I dropped it again.
"Break me...completely, Lord."
This was going to be a long night.

       I was surprised by my overwhelming desire to make it look perfect. I knew going into this project it was a broken pitcher, but I still tried to hide the hot glue that seeped through the cracks.  I tried to line up the seams and get the angles just right.  I didn't want it just to come together, I wanted it to once again be perfect.   
"You think you're a perfectionist? I am the perfectionist."
And there I saw God's desire to make me into the me He desires, how He must feel when I work against His perfect plan, how patiently His hands are transforming me with the goal to make me not just better, but perfect.

       A few of the pieces would not adhere no matter how many times I re-glued them. They got on my nerves. Then, as I fixed one piece another came off, and another, and another. Soon everything I touched crumbled! I was so frustrated that my hard work, my half glued together pitcher, was falling apart before my eyes. I had been at it for hours and the pitcher was falling apart faster than I could keep up.  The shards of porcelain made their way into my hands and liquid desperation dripped a scarlet red contrast on the white of the pitcher.  Whatever rope I had I was at the end of.  This stupid pile of pieces had me slicing my flesh, spewing annoyance from my heart and settled in my head as hopelessness.
"You can't do it yourself."
I finally broke down in tears. He was right.  No matter how hard I tried I couldn''t get this life perfect on my own.  I had no hope if I relied on myself because I had no idea what I was doing.  I needed to let God put me back together.

       In the wee hours of the morning I realized there was no way to make this thing stay together and look pretty. If these broken pieces were ever going to join together then the glue holding them was going to show.  Why did that bother me so much?  Did I think I could hide the fact that my broken pitcher was glued back together?  Pass it off as if it had never experienced shattering trauma on my front steps? Was I ashamed of how it looked with glue seeping out the sides? (as if there's a better way to piece together a shattered pitcher?) There I went worrying about what other people saw.  I ran my glue gun along the outside walls and let go of my desire to make it look the way I wanted. No one will ever look at my pitcher and wonder how it's held together!  Now if only I would mirror that.  For one look at my life and the God-glue to be the most distinct element. 

      There was a big hole in the bottom. It didn't bother me too much because I doubt anyone will ever see it. Who looks at the underside of a pitcher? The one that made me uncomfortable was the big gaping hole on the front. Just looking at that section you can't even see what the pitcher used to look like. In place of beautiful porcelain all that's left is a hole.  I missed the pretty yellow that lay somewhere in porcelain powder across my kitchen table and out my front door.  It was an ugly and empty spot, front and center and it made the whole piece seem less functional (not like a glued together pitcher would ever serve it's purpose again, but with this huge hole it didn't even pretend to be able to!).  That hole made it grotesquely apparent that this thing had broken to pieces. 
And then I put the pitcher in the sunlight.
The sunlight spills out and it's the brightest, most beautiful part of the entire piece. All that's seen through the cracks is the light. The holes in my life are the parts I was most eager to cover up and hide but they're the parts where the light can shine the brightest!
 



For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ.
2 Corinthians 4:6