when you’re crushed and broken
It’s just the two of us for dinner. I scrounge up some chicken, left over from the chicken-with-cherry-sauce recipe from A Taste of Laity Lodge. Only for her, I serve it plain with bottled Hawaiian sauce and no cherries and a broken breadstick with pizza sauce. She skips the asparagus. Then she trades the chicken for leftover spaghetti.
Grace stands at the counter to watch Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure on the postage-size TV while she eats.
“Do you want me to shut it off?” she asks when she’s done.
“Yes. No.” I’d planned to listen to Job on my Bible CD while I cleaned up the kitchen, but I’m sucked in.
Tinkerbell is chosen to create a unique scepter to raise up a rare magical stone. When the light of the blue harvest moon at its peak passes through the gem, it’ll create blue dust that will restore the pixie dust tree. But there’s an accident, and the stone breaks, and Tinkerbell sets off on a quest to save Pixie Hollow. In the process she learns about accepting responsibility for her own actions and the importance of love and compassion and forgiveness.
I think about this movie in the morning as I pace around the living room, alternately yelling at and pleading with God in one of those dream-melting moments.
You’ve had some of those, right?
When the precious bundle they placed in your arms turns prodigal…
When infidelity shreds the vows you made until death do you part…
When disease nibbles away at your mother’s mind…
When the drunk driver runs the stop sign and steals a loved one…
When someone else gets a contract while 30 publishers reject your book…
When you’re pink slipped from the place you thought you’d rise in the ranks…
When your home and all it symbolized blows away…
When your bank account shrivels down to nothing…
When the tests show cancer…
When the tendrils of disappointment and fear squeeze and suffocate.
And you pace and scream and weep and oil the molding and throw a pillow (or worse) and collapse in a puddle of tears.
And you can’t hear Him, and you’re not sure He hears you, or sees you, and why won’t He do something.
Why is He so silent and unmoving?
And you just can’t take any more.
So you sit in the rubble and scrape your wounds with the fragments.
But then you rise, dust yourself off.
And you reach for the tip of His tassel, cling to the red cord.
Because what else can you do?
And you remember that your redeemer lives, and you’ll hope in Him even though He slays you.
And you remember that all your treasure is wrapped up in Him, and you are His treasure.
And you believe it. And faith banishes fear.
And your heart, though squished like an underfoot strawberry, still drips love, and you pour and pour, and you’re a drink offering on the altar of your shattered dreams.
And the hollow ache yawns wide, and it’s a vessel to hold the perfume of His presence–even when you don’t sense it.
You don’t smell it, but others do.
Because it’s the crushed who seep the sweetest fragrance.
It’s the broken and the bent who bend the light the brightest.
At the end of the movie, when Tinkerbell unveils her art, the other fairies gasp at the sight of the moonstone shards. But the way Tinkerbell has situated the pieces, dangled them from the scepter, they are super magnified, and the surface area is so increased that when the beams of the blue moon pass through, they’re reflected in majestic rays and flashes of light that create the largest supply of pixie dust ever.
It never would have happened without the breaking.
Stilled through the breaking,
Sandy
Update (03/13/2013): The day after this posted, I learned that that David Landrith, pastor of Long Hollow Baptist Church out of Hendersonville, Tennessee, is going through a crushing. He’s been diagnosed with colorectal melanoma. I’ve written about it here. (I traveled with a team from this church to Haiti in December.) Would you pray for him and his family?
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HisFireFly recently posted..Something beautiful
Yes, breathe…
Just beautiful. I grasp at every word and remember… the times…
Hope does come. Eventually.
Sharon O recently posted..Proverbs 4
I’m thinking hope is always there, Sharon. It’s just a matter of whether or not we cling to it.
It’s in the breaking, the beauty comes. YES, LORD!
Susan recently posted..lions and lambs
Amazing what insights even a little Tinkerbell can bring.
I just wrote, “It would never happen without the breaking” on a post-it note for my computer screen. Thank you for these words today! Blessings!
And blessings to you, Michelle. I’m glad there were words that grabbed you today.
Oh my, Sandy … oh, my. Thank you.
S. Etole recently posted..The Cooks of 1911 ~
Love to you, Susan.
A marvelous post Sandy! I will be referring people to it who are dealing with such things as you enumerate! Blessings to you!
Jim
Jim Kane recently posted..My review of Jonathan R. Miller’s Delivery
Humbled, Jim. Good to see you again. Blessings to you, too.
Spring is coming!
What a wonderful post. It reminds me of how the light of God’s love can shine through the broken places in this clay vessel of ours as we walk this Earth. I’m glad you could find God’s love, even in a Disney cartoon. It’s all about where your focus is.
happygirl recently posted..Does everyone hate themselves? Just a little bit?
So true. A light sealed can’t shine…
I remember way back when I took an English Lit class. We had to write a paper on Beowulf, and I found all kinds of spiritual applications. The professor was not impressed.
I will never look at Tinkerbell the same way again.
Megan Willome recently posted..Peaches
Shall we turn our attention now to Peter Pan and the lost boys and Captain Hook? Maybe the crocodile?
I love Peter Pan and in the non-Disney version she is a little toot of a fairy but I like her despite that
Sandy, when I started reading this I didn’t expect the heart response that happened. I am only a slightly smooched strawberry at the moment—but I may be headed for all out squished. I am believing for the sweet aroma..
Believing with you, Dea. Thinking of lemon balm…
Coming over from Imperfect Prose. Tinkerbell is my girls’ favorite….we watch it constantly. And finding beauty in the brokenness? Yes. It is such a relief when we stop fighting and allow God to work through the mess and the hurt. Thank you for this.
Brenna D (@BrennaJD) recently posted..Falling in Back In Love
So glad to see you, Brenna. And sometimes that beauty may not even be seen in our lifetime. That’s a tough truth to cling to…
But there can still be a sweet aroma in the midst of the crushing.
Beautiful ….the crushed brings the sweetest fragrance….and yes isn’t true…unless the brokenness comes…so much of the light is kept from shining all its beauty….may we be willing be broken bread and poured out wine. Aren’t you just loving then40 day reading….I have been pleasantly taken by such wonder these days. And this is our Father’s world….He speaks to us everywhere…through grass and trees….and Disney.
I *am* loving the 40 days, Ro. I never would have thought speed-reading (or in my case, listening) through the Bible would be so enlightening. I’m certain I’ll do it again.
Beautiful, Sandy. Hard things, the breaking – yes, they make way for the light that we might otherwise never experience. But they’re still hard, aren’t they? (Ask Dan why I have to sign in all my info every time I comment here. It’s weird.)
Diana Trautwein recently posted..A Trip to the Dentist — A Deeper Family
Hard. Yes.
And I don’t know about the signing in. Maybe it depends on the commenting system? I know I have to sign in at a lot of places each time, too. I’ve asked, but I’m a little afraid to change. If I do, will I lose old comments? (And remember how Disqus hated me for a long time?)
Mmmm…. sending a hug Sandy. Glad that God spoke to you through a child’s story. Isn’t that just like Him to let you know he was right there with you? Thank you for shining in the brokeness.
Patricia Spreng recently posted..The Widow
I miss you.
Yes… I’ve been there. I love how God used the cartoon also to connect the dots and minister to your heart through the breaking. He is so good to us even when we think He’s silent. I went through something similar as well, and I do know all these feelings you describe. I hope the breaking is made beautiful soon.
Kim recently posted..Going and Doing
If we only have eyes to see, we can see Him in everything–right, Kim? Love to you.
Tore at my heart. Thanking God that He is in everything. That through Him we are redeemed from all those depths that you listed. That we are freed to come to Him. That is there. Here. Now and forever.
Blessings to you,
Janis
Janis Cox recently posted..FIVE MINUTE FRIDAY – Home
Amen and amen, Janis. Here, there, now, forever.
The day after this posted, I learned that that David Landrith, pastor of Long Hollow Baptist Church out of Hendersonville, Tennessee, is going through a crushing. He’s been diagnosed with colorectal melanoma. I’ve written about it here. (I traveled with a team from this church to Haiti in December.) Would you pray for him and his family?
And you remember that your redeemer lives, and you’ll hope in Him even though He slays you.
And you remember that all your treasure is wrapped up in Him, and you are His treasure.
oh Sandra. AMEN. amen. and praying for David… this life can be so very hard sometimes.
Oh yes, it can be so hard. But God is good–in all. xoxo
Oh, this. Yes. Yes.
Natasha Metzler recently posted..why you should read your Bible {even when you’re mad at God}