Putting us Back Together

Yesterday I had lunch with a dear friend who is fighting a hard battle.  She looks fragile, but she is scrappy.

Prayerful.

And resolved.

She is grieving loss and pain and trauma, but also celebrating the simple fact that she is alive.  And alive is good.

Alive is something.

I try to listen well.  To her.  To The Voice.  I try to hold her bits and pieces and tears.  I picture Him cupping them in Kind Hands.

Many people are good at this.  I don’t think I’m one of them.  But I try to show up and be present to her and to Him.

The Bible says we’re pot-like.  Plain or fancy, sturdy or fragile,

We get knocked around.  Dinged.  Sometimes smashed to smithereens.  We’re broken.

And God gives us friends to pick up the pieces, hold the hurt, and help put us back together.   Yeah, I know He is the only one who can do The Real Mending, but I think He lets us help.

Kind of like a mother lets her toddler “help” with the big girl job of sweeping the kitchen floor.

There is another friend who has been bashed around a  lot.  Surgeries, healing and hopes, dreams of marriage, the fairytale, and now a longing for children.  Doctors look at her with eyebrows raised, all skeptical.  They do tests.  And we gather around her one evening, feeling shattered with her.

As community we sweep up the shards, turning them over, trying to make sense and to put them back together… It’s messy and hard and our fingers get sticky and our muscles ache from holding onto promises and prayers.

“If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us.” 2 Cor. 4:7

We sit together with friends in their dark and broken places and together we are mended.

And that light that God has put in us, dim though it may be, still shines through the cracks.