gift, Present Catholic

Mended with Gold

This summer I got to spend it living with my aunt and uncle. Two people who are truly an inspiration to me. I was welcomed into their home as I took on a new and bold adventure. It was during this summer that I got to hit the reset buttons in many areas of my life. Not only did I learn a lot as I dove into pursuing a big dream, but I healed. I healed in ways I wouldn’t have been as easily able to had I kept on the same path.

During this time, my aunt and uncle also welcomed me into their lives which included an occasional at home Happy Hour on Wednesdays (their date night). So as my time was coming to an end in VA, I began thinking of a gift I could give them to offer my gratitude. Inspired by the big wine lovers that they are, I found a cool company that turns wine bottles into serving trays- perfect for their Happy Hours! It was even in my aunt’s favorite color and could have an imprint of hummingbirds which we often admired from their porch. I was incredibly excited for this gift.

And then it arrived… shattered.

After some emails and realizing there wasn’t enough time for a replacement I got to thinking. Kintsugi, a Japanese art form that uses gold to mend pottery, came to mind. I did some research and realized it just might work. So I tried it and it actually came out really beautiful! My aunt and uncle loved it and found a spot to display it right away.

Now that I’m back home and reflecting on my time, this gift keeps coming to mind. It felt very much like a symbol of my time down in VA- a time of my broken pieces being mended back together. But not just so that I would look like how I was before but to be mended with gold and return even more beautiful. One person described the gift as “a priceless piece of art” and I am now beginning to see myself that way too.

And then just last night it happened… another piece was chipped off of me.

But as this new piece has been removed, I stand still and I surrender it to the Lord. I allow Him to do His work and trust that He will mend this piece too with His priceless gold and that I will emerge from this fresh break even more beautiful, precious, and sacred.

I don’t know what the final artwork of my life will look like when my time here on earth comes to an end. But what I do know is that the Master Artist is not surprised by any of these broken pieces and is already holding the tools that will mold each part of me back onto His Sacred Masterpiece.

It can be easy to look at the broken piece lying next to you and think- will I ever be worth the effort to be kept whole? Will anyone sacrifice themselves to protect me from being broken? Why am I not beautiful enough as I am, do I really need more gold? While these are all understandable questions, they are not valid because there is One Person, the only person who matters, who has already said yes by the gift of His own life.

A few days ago, I sat in church after Mass and questioned my worth. Whether I would ever be the one someone else was willing to sacrifice for. Jesus then gently took me through His Passion, Death, and Resurrection and with each scene looked at me and said, “I thought you were worth it in each of these moments.” Worth it to be tortured, ridiculed, and killed. Worth it to be left lifeless in a tomb. Worth it to actually fulfill His promise and mission and bring ME salvation by rising from the dead. HE says I’m worthy and HE has already proven it. And in that I know I am seen, I am chosen, and I am DEEPLY loved.

Regardless of whether anyone else believes I am worthy (which many do), I trust the Lord in this. I trust Him more than I can ever trust myself (although this new break has also reminded me that my intuition is not as clouded by wounds as I thought it was and that I can in fact trust myself, especially when I continue to surrender all to God in the process). He sees things that I could never see. He creates paths where there was no humanly possible way for it to be formed. He moves mountains for those He loves and those who love Him back by trusting Him. So once again, I release a gift I was so grateful to have for but a short time and I leave my hands wide open ready to receive at any moment whatever He desires to give me next.

As I look at this broken serving dish turned one-of-a-kind piece of art, I remember the looks on my aunt and uncle’s faces and the joy they felt from the story behind it. To them, the gold looked like it was meant to be there. And that is exactly how God views us. Not as broken pieces of art that were slapped back together. But as beautiful stories lined with gold in the most unique and unrepeatable places. Let His light shine through your whole being, broken gold-filled lines and all. You may just find yourself attracting even more attention and love in His name than you ever could have had you not let your act of loving others chip off a bit of you here and there.

Be vulnerable and be bold, friends. The only thing stopping you is fear and that has no place in the making of a masterpiece.

The Joyful Banana

Last year, around this time, I found myself in the throes of depression yet again. It has been a fog that has followed me for many years now, limiting my capacity to feel, receive, and express joy in more ways than I like to admit. The cross of this is a truly defeating and exhausting one, no matter the reasoning for its presence in the first place. Well, last year someone posted a video of a little girl receiving a banana for a Christmas gift. And her reaction made me break down in tears. “A banana! A banana!” rang from her lips as she joyfully proclaimed what her gift was and how excited she was to receive it. I expressed that, that joy was what I wanted for Christmas. I wanted my heart and mind to become overwhelmed by the little blessings and gifts in life no matter how “common” or “ordinary” they seemed.

Well, when Christmas came, the last gift I opened was just that, a banana. Yet, joy was not my initial reaction. In fact, confusion was. To the gift giver’s disappointment, I had to be reminded of the video. Only then did I break down into tears with the biggest smile on my face.

Now, with that banana long gone, I reflect on the moment and realize how often that has been the case in my life. I pray for something that I so deeply desire, and then I promptly get distracted by other things in life and forget the prayer was ever said in the first place. Even with the answered prayer right in front of me, I remain clueless and a little embarrassed knowing I’m missing something… Only after the gift is explained to me do I even remember the prayer was said at all!

Through this process I can picture the face of my Lord, so excited to hear my prayer, the wheels turning in His mind as to how He will (not can, but will) fulfill this longing of my heart, and the anticipation He feels as He begins to reveal the gift to me. Then, I can see the sting in His eyes as I look puzzled at the gift in my hands and then back at Him (or on my worst days when I outright reject the gift). However, the sting only lasts a moment because His mercy is beyond my human comprehension. I ask Him, or beg Him, to explain the gift to me and He gently and with a new twinkle in His eye begins to remind me of my initial request and show me how He managed to fulfill it. My goodness is it a humbling moment when the lightbulb turns on and I realize how I forgot the longings of my own heart, yet He did not.

Sometimes, in all honesty, I still reject the gift because it doesn’t come in the package that I want. My pride is a selfish beast that I long to tame so that I never cause that look of pain on my Lord’s face ever again. Yet, I know I will hurt Him more times than I can bear to fathom. But I also know that I can change that pain back into love and joy simply by staying present with Him in that moment and asking Him to explain the love He is offering to me. It is when I pretend to understand and simply brush the gift aside afterwards that I cause more pain. But it is when I humble myself and ask the questions, that I enter more deeply into the most life-giving relationship I could ever dream of.

This year my depression still lingers, and new wounds only fuel its presence. With those new wounds have also come many prayers, many that I am sure I have promptly forgotten as well but that the Lord in His goodness has not. Some have already been answered- most received in packages I did not want, some in packages I have yet to understand, and some with a joy that could only be the answer to a prayer about a banana. As I continue to sit with the Lord and He explains to me His master plan of hunting down and fighting to give me each of my heart’s desires, I find myself fully present, gazing into His eyes, and learning to trust His every word so that each gift results in a joy in me like that little girl had for a banana.

So, as we approach Christmas this year, what is your joyful banana? And how will you respond when the Lord in His unceasing generosity inevitably gives it to you, regardless of what the package it comes in looks like?