Being Broken

Being Broken

A sculptor traveled to Japan to take part in various art exhibitions. He had brought several hand-made clay cups as gifts for his host. As he began to unpack, he found that the baggage handling process had broken four of the cups. Without another thought, he put them in the trash can in his room.

At the end of his stay, his host presented him with a going-away present: the same four cups, now reassembled and mended with silver. His host said, "Now, even better than when you brought them!"

The artist learned of the Japanese art of Kintsugi, meaning to artfully rejoin something damaged, or Kintsukuroi, golden repair. To the Japanese, repairing something that has a history and has suffered damage makes it even more beautiful. They draw attention to the cracks with a resin that is colored gold, or may even contain real gold. They "cherish the imperfection of a broken pot repaired in this way….seeing it as a creative addition and/or re-birth to the pot’s life story."  (See original story at this blog).

To reclaim and reassemble these broken pottery pieces is probably not easy. So many cultures would see the broken pieces simply as garbage--once shattered, there is no value left. But through Kintsugi the original piece is not just put back together, but enhanced, embellished, and given more worth than it originally had. Some Japanese stories tell of collectors purposely breaking their valuable pottery just so it could be repaired in this way!

In a trendy twist, many artists are taking broken china and "upcycling" it for a mosaic. This artist shows how she took a dish of her mother's that she had accidentally broken, and combined it with other broken pieces to make a new piece of art (and to preserve the look and sentiment attached to the original dish).

Why am I talking about broken dishes? The idea came to me as my husband and I discussed several events from our lives over the past years. We were on a long 3-hour drive, so we had a lot of time to remember the good, bad and ugly. :) We talked about how certain events, relationships, and resulting spiritual crises had left us feeling "broken." He had read about Kintsugi before, and likened himself to the broken pottery. I compared it to the mosaic from a broken dish. Together, we discussed how the healing process of putting our lives back together was actually quite painful. It was slow. It was hard to see any beauty during the formation of healing bonds. But in the end, we could see that, like in Kintsugi or mosaics, the beauty of our lives was actually enhanced by the process of "being broken," then being put back together by The Healer, Jesus Christ.

Do you ever feel like a broken vessel? Maybe the weightier matters of life have left stress fractures. Maybe the load of procrastinated repentance is cracking the surface. Maybe storms completely outside of your control have nonetheless crushed you beyond your ability to endure. And maybe, you just feel broken.

But broken does not mean lost. Broken does not mean garbage. Broken does not mean irreparable.

Broken means ready to become new again.

When we feel like a broken vessel, we can know that we are in the hands of the Divine Potter. Isaiah 64:8 says, "O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand." This scripture tells me that there is a master plan for our lives, and the Divine Potter sees the best form we can become. We are promised: "Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel" (Jeremiah 18:6).

But, if we have already been hardened, formed, fired into a certain shape--and that shape is not the final form we were meant to be--how else can we be reformed? The clay will not return to its soft, malleable state. The clay will have to be broken. "Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel" (Psalm 2:9).

The Broken Vase, by Harry Watrous

The thing about being broken is we all ask, why? Why break me? What was wrong with how I was before? Sure, I might have had a few flaws. Maybe I was looking tarnished. But was it so bad?

Remember this: Broken is the sacrifice that has been asked of us. When the Savior spoke to the Nephites just prior to his appearance, he said, "Ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit." Moroni 6:2 reads, "Neither did they receive any unto baptism save they came forth with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and witnessed unto the church that they truly repented of all their sins."

We can rationalize that our few flaws or tarnished spots are not grievous sins. We'll change those, eventually. But our Divine Potter may know that now, sooner than we thought we were ready, we need to sacrifice those things and give him a broken heart.

President Ezra Taft Benson called it godly sorrow. It is "a deep realization that our actions have offended our Father and our God. It is the sharp and keen awareness that our behavior caused the Savior, He who knew no sin, even the greatest of all, to endure agony and suffering. Our sins caused Him to bleed at every pore. This very real mental and spiritual anguish is what the scriptures refer to as having 'a broken heart and a contrite spirit.' Such a spirit is the absolute prerequisite for true repentance" (Ensign, Oct. 1989, p. 4).

I know that in my life some of those times when I felt most broken through betrayal, pain, loneliness, and deprivation, I felt real "mental and spiritual anguish." And even then, I didn't always look for healing from the source that could heal. I was still stubborn, independent--wounded, but not willing to soften and give in, ask for help and be willing to change.

To be truly brokenhearted requires the second element of our sacrifice: contrition. Elder Bruce D. Porter said, "The sacrifice so entailed is a sacrifice of pride in all its forms. Like malleable clay in the hands of a skilled potter, the brokenhearted can be molded and shaped in the hands of the Master. ... Those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit are willing to do anything and everything that God asks of them, without resistance or resentment. We cease doing things our way and learn to do them God's way instead" (Ensign, Nov. 2007, p. 32).

That's the hard part. Resistance and resentment are the stubborn burrs that attach to us when we are going through trials. It is the hardest trait to rid ourselves of--yet being broken will be futile until we quit resisting, quit resenting, and allow a reformation or a "re-formation" into the pattern the Lord would like to see in us.

For, "As we make the sacrifice to Him of all that we have and all that we are, the Lord will fill our hearts with peace. He will 'bind up the brokenhearted' (Isaiah 61:1) and grace our lives with the love of God." (Bruce D. Porter, ibid.).

I am still in the process of "reforming." I am still learning to be contrite and quit asking, "Why?" I am learning gratitude for the changes. I am just beginning to see a glimmer of the gold veins that fill the cracks in the vessel, making what was broken actually more beautiful. With patience I may yet learn to fully offer my broken heart to Him, the Master Potter, who can do so much more with it than I.