BROKEN PIECES (pt. 1)

Nine year old Marcell stood in the empty classroom staring down at the eyeglasses in her hands. Black, ugly, Air Force issue eye glasses that looked like they had wings on the tips of them and could fly away. The thick lenses with the bifocals and the plastic sheets that sat on the glass themselves were called “prisms” all to make her left eye strengthen and straighten. Just months before she had eye surgery so her eye would no longer wander off on its own to the outside of the eye but the doctor accidentally over corrected and now the eye turns inward to her nose. Seriously, what was more pathetic? At least it looked cooler for her eye to wander to the outside. 

Tears streamed down Marcell’s face as the taunts echoed through her mind. Sticks and stones do break bones but…words, WORDS…they CAN hurt! Sure, she had the wherewithal to look at the mockers and tell them how “four eyes are better than two” and laugh right along with them. But in private, those words hurt. Marcell kept staring at those glasses and the anger built until she threw them down as hard as she could. As they tumbled to the ground, they broke. Clean through. Not the earpiece, not the part that sits at the temple, not the hinge nor even a nose pad. Nope, they broke right down the middle on the bridge. Do you know what’s worse than wearing Air Force issue black eyeglasses at the age of 9???? Wearing them the next day held together with masking tape right on the bridge of your nose. Marcell sure did wish in that moment that those eyeglasses could really fly away.

Marcell’s heart felt just as broken that day. Many days throughout life we find ourselves looking at the broken things that we cannot let go of. Our spirts are so deeply wounded, but we can’t let go. Why? Why do we hang on to the broken things in our lives? When will we lay them at the feet of our Saviour, the only one who can heal this broken mess?

It is time to throw away the broken glasses, the broken plate, the broken statue that meant so much but now just gathers dust and find who you are in Christ and let Him heal your past and your heart.

Proverbs 17:22: “A merry heart does good, like medicine, But a broken spirit dries the bones.”   

Oh Lord, please take our broken pieces and refashion them into who You want us to be. Help us to give all of them to You, and to quit harboring them in the depths of our hearts that we may be free from the bondage of a broken spirit.