A Confession of Brokenness

The Precious Moments wall plaque was broken. More precisely, my Mother’s Precious Moments wall plaque was broken. My Mother collected their figurines and took great care of them. At the time of the “incident” I was thirteen years old. We had moved the previous year to our new home in Wichita Kansas. It was an 1980’s home and I lived in the basement with its red gum wood-panel and easement windows that cast dim light during the brightest of summer days. I loved the darkness of it. Especially at night when the lights were extinguished. I found it cozy and perfect for a growing, albeit sometimes odorous teenage boy.

The incident occurred, as most would with a teenager in the home. I was naturally kicking my soccer ball around the well furnished basement. A thin wood-paneled wall separated my room from the basement living room and I used every square foot of those spaces to dribble and Pele my way to the foot of the stairs. On this occasion I happened to flip the ball off of my back heel only for it to sail further than I had anticipated. I had meant to header the ball, but I missed and it accidentally bounced off of the Precious Moments plaque, which in turn, was dislodged from its hanging place of pride and crashed to the ground broken into three large pieces.

I panicked. These porcelain collector pieces were my Mom’s treasured keepsakes and I had just carelessly broken one of them with a soccer ball. So I did what any wise teenager would do in that situation. I gingerly picked up the three broken pieces. I was careful to check for smaller fragments left on the carpet. Having found none I cautiously carried the pieces to the desk in my room, grabbed some superglue I had in my drawer, ever-so delicately glued the three pieces back together.

I was meticulous about my reconstruction of this precious keepsake. When it had dried I hung it back up on its place of honor and, from a distance, you could not see the cracks that would convict me of my crime. It hung there, undisturbed and undiscovered for three years. No one was the wiser. No one suspected anything. I had seemingly gotten away with my non-premeditated malfeasance…that is until three years later we were packing up to move to another city in another state. That’s when my little accident and coverup was discovered. With boxes and bubble wrap in hand my Mother glimpsed the figurine plaque and finally saw that it had been broken.

I would like to say that I confessed to my crime and that I had grown wiser in those three years, but I would be lying if I said that. I was still a reckless, messy, often odorous teenager who was still trying to figure life out. I did what any teenager my age would have done if they had been in my shoes – I pleaded ignorance. “I don’t know how that happened,” I lied. Dismayed, my Mother still lovingly wrapped the now cracked and superglued figurine plaque into its box. I felt horrible and ashamed at what I had done. Not only had I broken a treasured keepsake of my Mother’s, I had also lied about how it had gotten broken by pleading the fifth – ignorance.

I have thought a lot about that incident over the years. How I might have done things differently. It might seem like such a small, trivial thing and yet I carried that guilt around with me. Inside I knew that’s not who I wanted to be. I desired to be better than that deceptive little teenager from Wichita. As a parent I now know the disappointment and sadness when something breaks in our house and no one seems to know how it happened. A part of me wants to laugh at the similarities and absurdities from my childhood, while the other, the more adult part of me, wants to demand ownership and teach personal integrity to my children.

This personal story continually reminds me about our destructive tendencies as humans. We are often hell bent on tearing down more than we build up. And when we do destroy something we often attempt to hide our transgressions. We cover it up and sometimes we try to prop up that which we broke and pretend that it had always been broken.

I’m thankful that God didn’t do that with us. We had broken His trust and had disobeyed. We – all of humanity, were culpable of this broken relationship with Him – the Creator of the Universe. We covered up our shame. We tried to pretend nothing had happened, and yet God knew. He knew about our brokenness. Instead of throwing us away and starting over, He went about restoring us through His son Jesus. He mended the broken hearted, salvaged the sin-sick souls and forged a new creation bound by the blood of Jesus – the toughest thing in the entire universe.

Are you broken?
Have you been attempting to cover it up by doing all you can to glue those shattered pieces back together? For a time it might actually work. But it won’t last. Those cracks will still be visible. God wants to heal and restore you completely. He desires to fix your shattered pieces. It won’t always be easy, but eventually, should you accept His help, you can be restored completely.

Are you in the process of Restoration?
To those who have already experienced this restoration, how did God restore you? Where are you on that pathway of restoration? How have you grown? What can you share with others to help them find the healing and restoration as well?

Something more to ponder today.
God seeks to bring you restoration too. Seek Him out and surround yourself with others who are also on this journey!