“FRAGILE”

That’s the word scrawled in large, sharpie, handwritten letters up and down both sides of the box.

Honestly, the word “Fragile” kinda scares me, like a warning that heartbreak is always an imminent possibility. And maybe it is?

When l cut open the brown box to see this smaller white box inside, wrapped up in a singular red bow, I see her handwriting on the outside of the card tucked under the red ribbon.

That’s when I know.

She must have remembered the date.

“the moment of The Trauma is always like water through fingers, and there’s no way to grab hold of it, to change it, you just have to let it wash over you while you breathe through the wave of it all, all over again.”

The date, the anniversary, of the Trauma, that I had been dreading to see approaching, looming ugly, there on the calendar. She must have written the date down somewhere, let the date brand itself knowingly into her own scarred grief.

I need a moment. Need to let go of this box, needed to walk away and just breathe. I’m not sure I’m ready.

Not ready to feel how that next wave of grief is going to hit and sideswipe me, sweep me away and right back to that moment that I want to make one last desperate lunge for, to grab hold of it all as it was, to hold on to someone, and not lose them — but the moment of The Trauma is always like water through fingers, and there’s no way to grab hold of it, to change it, you just have to let it wash over you while you breathe through the wave of it all, all over again.

I think I’m not ready to mark this anniversary of the Trauma, because it’s what’s marked me.

I think — I’m scared to feel.

And maybe I hadn’t known it till right then:

Being scared isn’t really that much different than being scarred.

“Being scared isn’t really that much different than being scarred.”

You’re scared because you’ve been scarred — scarred by a tender pain that became it’s own kind of loafer who moved right in and you can’t seem to get to leave, scarred by hope that shattered and cut you when you tried to pick up the pieces, scarred by dreams that never woke up to actually become any real part of your reality.

Maybe that’s it:

You’re scared because you’ve been scarred by hope.

You’ve been scarred by hope that broke and the shards of all you imagined ended up cutting your heart unimaginably deep.

I let the box marked “fragile” sit on the counter.

Scars need to take their own tender time.

When I finally have the courage to open the cardboard flaps again, it feels a bit like a gentle, slow, unpacking of a bit of a pandora’s box of pain. But the handwritten card’s looping lines of ink wrap us with love and how she’s thinking of us, how she’s beyond sorry for the Trauma that we found ourselves in a year ago this week. My heart aches a bit again because scars can still feel pain.

And then I delicately unwrap what she’s sent: a bowl.

A broken bowl.

How could she love us so perfectly like this?

“What seems impossibly wrecked can still possibly be mended with golden seams.”

It’s a bowl that’s been broken — and mended with gold.

I turn it slowly, carefully, in my hands, blinking all the feelings back.

Could this bowl be a mirror, can I somehow make this into a mirror of my life? Instead of pretending it’s never been broken, the bowl’s been pieced together in a way where all these thin veins of gold mark the mending.

What seems impossibly wrecked can still possibly be mended with golden seams.

I lightly trace the gold seams, like they’re braille, like they’re helping me to see:

“Why let there be a shaming in our pain, when there can be a reclaiming?”

Why pretend that your heart’s never had to be mended?

Why let there be a shaming in our pain, when there can be a reclaiming?

There doesn’t have to be shame in pain. There doesn’t have to be any pretending to hide a mending. There can be a way to heal that is holy.

That’s all I feel, feel all her comfort: She sent me healing, she sent me an image of healing.

I walk around the house with this gold-veined kintsugi bowl in hand, scanning, weighing, looking, searching for some safe place to safely set the bowl, somewhere it can’t be dropped, where it can’t be tipped, can’t fall, can’t break.

But any shelf could lead to disaster. Set it up high — and the fall then is only further. Set it down low, and it’s only more likely to get accidentally nudged and end up shattered.

I stand still in the kitchen, both hands wrapped around this bowl broken into beauty. Somehow, some way, I need to keep this scarred bowl safe, so somehow it can keep speaking to me.

But the truth is: No matter where I put this broken bowl — it can break again. There’s no way to protect the bowl, there’s no way to protect my own heart. The unbelievable happens, the call comes, some trauma explodes on an unsuspecting, ordinary Thursday, people you love slip from your hands, gone, and you aren’t sure how you can live through the way your heart keeps cracking.

I hold the bowl to my chest. Why does life hurt like this?

Why is it that what’s most valuable is always the most breakable?

Is it because: What makes something most valuable is exactly because it is most breakable.

The most valuable, is always the most vulnerable, which is always the most breakable.

You love most what is most breakable. You love most what is most vulnerable. People and hearts and relationships and dreams and hopes and little moments, you love all that is most fragile.

What you’re likely to love the most, is exactly what you are most likely to lose. The most valuable, is always the most vulnerable, which is always the most breakable.

All love is always dangerous love.

And all the things that are kept “safe,” that are kept less vulnerable, are also the things that are worth less. All that is kept less vulnerable, is always worth less.

But that’s not any life worth living, not any life anybody wants to live.

That’s what I decide: I’ll simply set the gold-mended kintsugi bowl right where I can see it most, right where it can speak to me most often of how things, even now, can still be — right there on my desk. Where it can also most likely break.

Because the reality is:

The only way to keep the valuable from being breakable — is to find a way to make them buriable.

And one thing the Trauma has taught me is:

“Life breaks, and heart breaks, and our stories break, but nothing can break the redemptive storylines of God“.

You don’t have to bury the fragile, beautiful, vulnerable things out of fear, out of striving for some kind of self-protection, out of hardened, dysfunctional denial, but you can live with and live fully embracing all of life’s beauty and fragility, and you can celebrate all that is breakable, and each and every day, you can savor the fleeting, amazing grace of all that is amazingly fragile, and you don’t have to take anything for granted, nor take and bury anything to protect yourself from pain.

Life breaks, and heart breaks, and our stories break, but nothing can break the redemptive storylines of God.

What is broken can be joined into some kind of beauty again when the heart’s joined to God’s.

Our brokenness can be mended with redeeming love of God, whose heart broke to redeem ours with the only love that is golden.

It’s true, and it is all of our lives:

The mended bowl will break again.

My mended heart will break again.

But pain and fear and hiding and silencing and traumas do not have to break us again.

“There can be more to our broken stories: Traumas aren’t erasable, but something in trauma is always redeemable.

There may be no way to stop the traumas — but there is a way to stop believing that nothing in trauma is redemptive.

I cry hard in the kitchen. I lament nauseating loss. I don’t paper over pain, I sit in it. And too, countless times, I trace the golden healing of the bowl, and dare to look for ways to co-create redemptive beauty with Beauty Himself, to gather up pieces of pain in open hands, to defiantly trust even this can be made into a mosaic of grace.

There is always a way for what seems smashed to be redeemed with golden seams.

There can be more to our broken stories: Traumas aren’t erasable, but something in trauma is always redeemable.

I hold a fragile bowl, scarred with gold.

And held by His scarred hands that don’t shame but heal:

Your scars can be your art.


Are you feeling broken today?

Life breaks, and heart breaks, and our stories break, but nothing can break the redemptive storylines of God. Nothing can stop the WayMaker from making a way through whatever brokenness your story holds.

What is broken can be joined into some kind of beauty again when the heart’s joined to God’s.

What does it powerfully look like to have a way of life, even in the midst of trauma and brokenness, that actually lives the life-giving Way of Jesus?

Offering hope to your broken story, a way to the life you’ve always dreamed, right here: WayMaker