Just Thinking: Broken And Beautiful

When a beautiful object is broken, its value is diminished. It may be set aside or thrown away because of the imperfection. Consider this. Perfect beauty in the original creation may be found in the repurposing of it? In the same way, imagine how a person might feel about themselves. A scar, blemish, or any perceived imperfection can become the focus and cause one to feel less valuable, totally missing the beauty in their wholeness. Ultimate value may just be in the repurposing of ourselves. What do you think?

Transcript

You've heard broken,

But beautiful,

Or beautiful but broken,

But I'm not using the word but,

I'm using and,

Broken and beautiful.

This vase caught my attention in a little quaint shop that I go to when I want to get something different for my meditation space,

My puja table,

And I'm now learning the value and the beauty of an ancestor table.

So I go into little quaint shops and get something different to put in those places.

And as soon as I walked down one of the aisles,

This vase caught my attention from across the room.

And I thought,

I know exactly where I want it to go and what I want to put in it.

And at the same time,

The vase was saying,

Carol,

I want to go home with you.

So it was a slam dunk.

We were going home.

Lady wrapped it up,

Brought it in the house.

I saged it and just put it aside until I got the plants that I wanted.

I've had the vase for about a year and it's just been sitting there waiting for me to get these plants.

And it was taking me so long with the plants.

I can't get the plants where I live.

So my husband took a trip to Philadelphia with my daughter and he surprised me with the perfect plants.

He knew I was looking for them.

The ones he chose were a thousand percent better than the ones that I had imagined.

It was like Christmas that day.

Got my vase,

Turned the water on and water streamed out from underneath.

And I was so shocked.

I was thinking the water was coming from someplace else,

But it could only have been coming from the vase.

The vase was completely broken in half.

And the label was the only thing keeping those two halves together.

When you go to these little quaint shops,

You know,

You got to know how to shop.

You got to look at everything.

You get what you get.

So it was no point in taking it back because it's not like they have another to replace it.

This is it.

So what am I going to do with this now?

It's damaged.

So I dried it carefully.

It was such a fine hairline crack.

It did not detract from the beauty of the vase.

So I thought,

Okay,

Well,

I put a little piece of tape on the bottom so I would always know where the hairline crack started.

And one day I'm going to get creative and skilled with a glue gun or something and go in and seal up the crack.

But in the meantime,

I just wanted to put the vase back where it was.

So I did that.

And I thought it's beautiful on its own,

But it was supposed to hold my plants.

And immediately I thought,

Repurpose it.

It is still beautiful.

It is broken.

It's beautiful.

It's beautiful and broken.

Repurpose it.

So I have in my meditation room a whole lot of incense,

Which is a part of yours,

I'm sure as well.

And I put the incense,

The long stick ones in this vase.

And it's so perfect.

It's like,

That's what it was intended to be in the first place.

No water required.

It's just sitting there,

Beautiful as it was before with the incense,

Like that's where the incense belonged.

So what's the point of this whole thing?

Many of us are broken.

In fact,

All of us are broken in some way,

But we focus on our brokenness.

We focus on the imperfection and we don't see the beauty.

Or if we ever saw any beauty in ourselves,

Now we see the broken place and we focus on the broken place and suddenly we don't see the beauty anymore.

And people are not willing to come along and tell you how beautiful you are in spite of everything,

Because everybody's dealing with their own stuff.

They're dealing with their own cracks and brokenness.

But I'm talking about you,

The beautiful clay vase,

Beautiful instrument that you are.

You got a crack,

A chip,

Some imperfection,

But guess what?

You're looking at the brokenness.

You're looking at the flaw and totally overlooking the beauty of your wholeness.

And just like I repurposed the vase,

We need to repurpose ourselves.

We grow up with hopes and dreams and things that we want to do and things that we want to be.

And we have dreams about our whole life.

And then we find out that either we don't have the skills or something happened and we couldn't go to school.

What just didn't turn out the way it was supposed to turn out.

Oh,

You just can't figure out how to make it happen.

And so the first thing we do is turn on ourselves to look at what is wrong,

Because there's nothing wrong with the dream.

The dream is perfect.

It must be me.

There was nothing wrong with the design of the vase that I bought.

It is exactly as it was intended to be by the person that created it and painted it and everything was perfect,

But the crack was never intended.

But the crack doesn't detract from its beauty.

The same with you and I.

If we could manage to take our eyes off of the crack,

The chip,

The broken place in our life and stand back and look at what we are,

Maybe we are not what we intended to be.

Repurpose,

Decide something else.

My mother bought me a piano when I was eight years old.

So I tinker around with the keyboard and every couple of years,

I used to have dreams of being a musician,

But that is not what I was created to be.

So whenever I go back to trying to play music and rekindle the dream of being a musician,

I hit a roadblock because there are certain skill levels that I did not develop.

At this point in my life,

Not going to happen.

And you know what?

It wasn't intended.

I am now who I was intended to be.

Just like that vase that I bought,

It is right now sitting in my worship space,

Looking exactly the way the one who created it and fashioned it intended for it to be.

I was the one who had to come along and redefine its purpose.

So in our lives,

When we stand back and look at the total picture,

The beauty of who we are,

The perfection of who we are,

Get your mind off the crack.

Don't worry about the chip,

The broken place.

Don't worry about that.

Matter of fact,

I told you I put a little piece of tape so I would remember where the hairline starts.

Well,

That's just so I could fix it.

But actually,

Why do you want to keep going back to the place that you know is broken?

It was broken and it's still broken.

It was broken the last time you checked it.

It's still broken.

The same thing with us.

We have areas of our lives that are not as strong as other areas.

People would say,

Okay,

So we're going to work on our weaknesses,

Try to strengthen our weaknesses.

Well,

The new thought is,

No,

We're not.

We're weak in this area.

That's not your area of focus.

Don't waste your time trying to strengthen what you don't have.

Look at what you do have.

Look at the area of perfection,

Of excellence,

Of skill,

That area that you excel and do that.

Can you imagine wasting your whole life trying to fix a broken piece?

Even when you fix it,

It's never going to be perfect.

Oh yeah,

I'm going to get a hot glue gun and I'm going to carefully go inside the crack and I'm going to seal the crack,

But the crack will still be there.

It will never be perfect.

So part of me is saying,

Why waste your time?

Use the vase for the beauty that it brings right now.

It's not going to hold your plants,

But it does hold your incense.

And that is absolutely perfect.

I would have never thought of that.

Matter of fact,

I was looking for something to hold the incense and never knew I always had it.

Do the same thing with you.

Get in that mirror this week.

Matter of fact,

Not this week,

Do it today because a lot of things are going to come up this week.

Look at yourself,

Your perfect self,

Not your flaws,

Not your imperfections.

Look at the beauty of who you are and see where you fit in,

What you can do that you may have missed all along.

Okay,

So you say,

I'm not going to be able to see that.

Listen,

Stand there,

Ask spirit to reveal it to you so that you can see it.

And so maybe you don't see it right away.

Trust the process.

Spirit will reveal to you your flawless beauty,

Where you fit in so perfectly that nobody will look for the crack.

Don't look for the crack.

Look for what is already there,

Perfectly formed,

Fearfully and wonderfully made.

God breathes the breath of life,

The Ruach breath,

Pneuma breath,

God's own breath into us,

Not into a broken flawed vessel,

But into a vessel perfectly formed for its purpose.

Reviews

I loved this! I'm always trying to repurpose the areas of my life that feel cracked, broken, or irreparable. It's an opportunity to accept, let go, break it down, and rebuild into something new, different, and even more beautiful.
I laughed when you said the vase called to you to take it home. My family scolds me because if I see a stuffed animal or something sitting by itself on a shelf, I have to take it. It can be an ugly mutt of a creature, but I can't leave it sad and lonely. 😂

We really enjoyed this!
Thank you Carol for sharing your beautiful story and knowledge
🙏🏼

Exactly what I needed this morning. Thank you ✨♥️🤲🏾