The blessing of broken pieces: A whole new you!

I heard the crash before I realized that I'd knocked the vase to the floor. It smashed spectacularly with shards of ceramic scattering on the ground.  I would have shrugged it off, but this was an irreplaceable vase, that my late grandmother had made for me shortly before her death.  She'd spent hours working on the vase, shaping it on her pottery wheel, then baking it in her kiln and painting and glazing it before baking for a second time.  In a split second, this lovely gift was completely destroyed and lying shattered on my floor. 

Through tear streamed eyes, I picked up each piece and gently placed them on a tray.  Then I took out the Super Glue and started to put the vase together again, piece by piece, like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.  

Through a very slow, painstaking process, I picked up each piece - held it up to the light, turned it this way and that, in the effort to figure out where it fitted in the original vase. Then very carefully, I glued it in place.  I was determined to restore that vase to as close to its original condition as possible.  

Eventually, after doing all I could, I lifted up a strange looking version of the vase.  It was still a vase but clearly not the same as as it once had been. The cracks and gaps were very evident.  You could see that this was a damaged vase that some amateur had tried to restore to its original state but had some how fallen short of the mark.  What made it worse was that, even though I considered the repair to be my best effort,  when looking down onto the table, I noticed that there were bits of glass left over. 

Very carefully, I picked up the vase and filled it with water.  It immediately turned into a fountain with multiple streams pouring through the cracks.  I then realized that I had to give up and call it a day.  It was never going to be the same. I was devastated.  I clung so fiercely to my hope of getting it back to the way my grandmother had made it.

After a while, I wondered to myself "Did it REALLY have to get back to the way it was before?".  As the owner of an art site (www.showcase.zone) I often see lovely mosaics made from little tiles of broken glass.  Perhaps these broken pieces could be used to create a new work of art? With that in mind, I set about making something new.  I'm not an artist, but perhaps I could create something beautiful and still honor my grandmother.  As I hung my final piece up on the wall, I admired it.  Each piece was still part of something that my grandmother had lovingly created with her hands, but now it just looked different. In that moment I discovered the blessing of broken pieces.

The same is true in life.  When we go through troubled times, divorce, loss or failure, we feel our lives shatter into a thousand pieces much like that vase did. We then painstakingly work to put each and every piece back together in the hope that we will restore our life to the way it was before.  We give our best effort and work really hard, but we never quite recover to the way we were before. Instead of noticing the opportunity to create something new, we see only the flawed result of failing to get back to the person we once were.  

So I challenge you in 2016, if you are feeling as if your life has been shattered, to try to see the blessing of broken pieces.  Don't cling to the you of your past. As you hold each part up into the light, turning it this way and that - notice it's beauty.  Notice it's potential.  Keep the beautiful and useful parts of you and discard anything that won't contribute to a happy new life.  As you realize the blessing of broken pieces - you can create a whole new work of art.  And who knows?  It might be lovely enough to hang on a gallery wall.