Brokenness, I have come to realize, might be the most basic stroke of life. We get sick. We lose people we love. We have a vision, and life gets it twisted. A hurricane, tornado, an earthquake comes. Somebody leaves. We are in the wrong place at the wrong time. The dream doesn’t come true. Somebody needs us in a way that makes us have to pause our own wants. Life, as it does, happens.       

But the reality is that our brokenness is actually the fundamental foundation to our unrelenting beauty. We are, each one of us, an exquisite piece of stained glass, the elements of our life coming together in a riot of color that inspires, informs, absolves, calms, questions, creates. And as we study that stained glass, as we try to memorize every element of what is, we cannot predict the way the light will shine through us on any given day, at any given hour. All we can know is this: we are even more brilliant and radiant because of what we have experienced and not in spite of it.  

So here is what you must do: believe in your originality. Know that what makes you YOU is not what limits you but what illuminates you. Who you are, the way that you are configured, what you have experienced, and how you show up are a gift to this world.  You have a purpose that is profoundly, uniquely your own and this world needs you, just as you are, for its own healing.  

Our scars reveal our character. They show our strengths and not our weaknesses and the greatest gift we can give ourselves is the capacity to honor the journey that we have taken, to honor all that life has taught us, to aim each day to do good rather than be willing to do harm to ourselves. Our brokenness is nothing to be ashamed of; it is our music and our light. When we no longer feel like we must disguise or repair our cracks beyond all recognition is when our light begins to shine its brightest.  

You are not broken. You are brilliant.  

Turn you light on, dear heart. Illuminate our way.