Broken and Mended

 I want to write about my 2022 word, and I really don’t necessarily want to write about this, but God said, “Do it” so I am. 

I collect Willow Tree figurines. This went well in a house of few people, no dogs, and when I did the house cleaning. But when we added more people (one of whom seemed to knock them off the shelf like it was his JOB when he cleaned) and a dog with a wagging tail, these guys didn’t fare well.

I’ve moved them around a couple of times (and the most reckless house cleaner has his own house to clean now) to safer locations and the breakage seems to have stopped. When I cleaned up Christmas last night, I decided to repair the broken ones and put them back out in the hopes that they last in one piece this time.

I fired up my hot glue gun and got the broken pieces out, at which point I realized all of the broken parts came from one figurine… the mother and child one. The child’s head was broken off, his arm was broken off, and the mother’s head was off. I started by glueing those pieces back. Then I noticed the spots where the two were meant to be melded together also needed fresh glue— the two spots where they connected.

As I dabbed the glue, God brought to my mind several parents and sons and daughters I know in my own personal life who are broken. They are broken apart, and therefore are broken individually in pieces. Or maybe they were first broken individually and then became broken apart. Either way, as I held those pieces together and waited for the glue to solidify, He had me praying for those parent-child relationships. He had my praying for my own relationships with my children. 

Once I finished, I looked at the figurine and noticed a couple of things. The cracks, they still show. The glue created gaps in the structure. Some parts didn’t line up perfectly. The hot glue strings needed to be cleaned off. And I felt God reminding me that no relationship is perfect. Even when we find a way to mend, to heal, there are often still visible scars. Not all personalities are completely compatible, but love is what can still hold us together. I distinctly felt like He wanted me to write about that, but I was busy in the house and I moved on.

This morning, as I walked by that shelf with the Willow Tree figurines, He told me again. Write it. So I stopped, took a picture of the mother and child that were put back together but still bore the markings of being broken so that I could use it with the blog post, and then I kept working. Just now, as I sat down in my comfy gray chair to rest before I packed one more Christmas bin, He told me again. Write it.

So here it is. And as I have written, He’s given me one more point to make. 

When I first started working on them last night, I had five parts. I had to fix each individual piece, the child’s arm and head and then the mom’s head, before I could work on the whole. I couldn’t have reconnected the child and the mom without first fixing each of them. Sometimes we jump ahead and work to mend relationships without first working on ourselves. The root causes of the breaking are almost never one-sided. And until we can reach deep within and see where the mending needs to be done inside of us, we can’t fix the whole.

So to anyone reading this who is walking through a broken parent-child relationship, know that He sees you. He sees you and He is interceding on your behalf at the throne of HIS Father. He will mend the broken places, He will reconnect what is separated, and He will heal your heart. But first, He will be there while you examine your heart to see where the work can begin.