Of broken pieces and being put back together <3

Hello my friends

The picture above is, or shall we say was, a treasured miniature tea cup from my maiden Aunt Lizzie’s collection. It was gifted to me along with some of the other treasures that were kept in a built in cabinet in the tiny dining room of the modest brick home she shared with her mother on the fringe of downtown Louisville until my grandma passed and she finally found true love in her 60’s and sold the house to move to Vermont.

Whew…that was the longest run on sentence and a record for even me.

But in it is packed a gazillion memories of the home and playing under the dining room table with her tea cups and a button collection that was amazing.

Not only was the cup marvelous in and of itself…I mean seriously…a tiny parrot formed of china that perched on the gilded handle of this miniature delight; it was probably my most favorite of all that she had.

And she had some beauties.

At some point when she was downsizing, she remembered my love of them and gifted me the whole lot.

But as we were packing up our home of six years to move across town to a new home, I bumped up under the shelf that displayed them and they all came crashing down.

Shattered bits of china and shattered bits of a heart that has never done well with change and this destruction of one remnant of days gone by as I watched the home we brought our third baby into get packed up was just too much. I wrapped the broken pieces and carefully stored them in a box to at least keep for awhile.

I have had other pieces of my heart shattered since that day and there are memories that are now broken and marred by life and decisions made by others and myself.

Which is why these words from David touch my heart.

God made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before Him.

2 Samuel 22:21 The MSG

To this I can say a heartfelt “Amen!”

I remember a season I kind of crawled through a number of years ago where I wasn’t quite certain just how much more I could break and still survive.

Crying out to God, I asked Him to relieve the crushing because I was about down to nothing but dust.

And He whispered to my heart a picture of a finely woven net.

In my spirit I sensed His teaching that as I was broken, all that mattered would sift through the smallest holes of refinement and He could then remove any thing that would not surrender to the work He was doing in me.

Pride…jealousy….greed…envy…lust…self…the evil done to us by others and the bitterness it brings…all these are too big to be broken.

But I don’t want those to remain.

They are not God’s character and I only want His character left in me.

So I give Him the pieces…every time…and let Him make me complete.

It’s a good plan.

And way prettier than trying to glue it back together myself.

Blessings <3