Realizing Joy in Jagged Stones

I’ve been captivated by the word “hope” for many years. It started after my son was diagnosed with autism at a very young age, but this word continues to drift around in my mind and every once in a while, it bumps into something else that causes me to really pay attention. Such a thing happened recently that I wanted to share.

I’m going to be honest. I really hate facades. Those who know me in person know I don’t do well to just smile and pretend everything is okay when it’s not. Of course, not everything belongs on social media either, but we all know what we see on socials is only what people want you to see. I’m no different there, despite the fact that I think I’m being honest most of the time. The smiling photos aren’t fake. They are real smiles, borne from real experiences that created the smile. It’s just not always the whole story, or rather, it’s not the telling of all the stories at the same time. Just that one. Typically though, if I am sharing something more personal, it’s because I’m okay with people knowing about it for supportive reasons, but most of the time, it’s because I know I’m not the only one going through things and I want other people to know they’re not alone. Within the last couple of years, life circumstances have all but broken me. The details of those circumstances is irrelevant. What is relevant is a sort of revelation I had as I was considering the brokenness. The other-than I felt of myself. The smallness. The un-mattering. Maybe something you know a little about yourself, in your own way. 

I have these graphic Scripture postcards my brother and sister-in-law gave me as a gift many years ago. There are 100 postcards with fun or pretty or just cool designs of Scripture verses. I’ve sent some off as postcards, but others have been displayed in various ways over the years, and there’s one in particular that has been in a prominent place in my bedroom in the last two years that says, “There is always hope.” It’s from Psalm 73:26. I kept turning over that word in my head, like I turned a stone in my hands I found on a shore somewhere. Over and over again, I felt its edges, the smooth parts, admiring its colorations, and imagining the other rocks it must have been knocked against in the current of the water as it deepened its way into a warm bed of sand. There it lay, until finally discovered by a wandering tourist looking for a souvenir. That stone had many experiences, all of which made it into the stone as I found it that day. Hope, I thought… hope in what, exactly? We know biblical hope is not just the wishful thinking or desires of a future yet unknown, but rather that of a known outcome. Like 2 Corinthians 4:17 which says that our “light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” That sounds promising, right? And certainly hopeful! But the stone continued to turn again. What about now? Do we have anything to be hopeful about in the hard now? 

There, a smooth edge of the stone, rounded by hardship and devastation and salty tears cried over it again and again seemed to give an answer. 

Joy.

Joy? I asked myself, wondering if I had just been missing it all along. Sometimes you can’t really see something until you’re really ready to see it. But there, in the tiny hidden part of my mind that seems to eek open only in moments of utter desperation, it seemed plain as day under the moonlight streaming in through my window. 

There have been moments of joy.  Days , even. But a regular rhythm of joy through broken pieces of myself trying to breathe new life minute by minute, not so much. I feel even weaker and smaller knowing that while the Lord has never left, His hand never releasing mine to give me over to the waiting wolves, I’ve traveled rocky terrain in flip flops thinking – hoping – I would be just fine. “I’m supposed to be strong. I can do hard things,” I told myself. Others told me too. So upon unexpected and and even devastating crises, I buried myself in the sands of work and hobbies to build for myself a castle I could hide in, far enough away from the cresting waves that threatened to wash it all away. Limitations of various sorts kept me there, preventing me from standing on a solid foundation of truth, keeping me away from worship. Away from Jesus. Away from joy. 

I’m sure you may know about Kinsugi, a Japanese art form where broken ceramics are repaired using a special lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum. I have a plate from a women’s retreat where we chose a plate, broke it, and then used hot glue to put it back together and used gold paint pens to color over the cracks to imitate this art form. I’ve been thinking about that plate. I chose the plate I wanted to break at the retreat. But we don’t always get to choose our plates, do we? And even if we did, we certainly wouldn’t choose certain plates to break. We’d choose the plates we didn’t care much about. We’d likely choose thrifted, cheap finds over our great-grandmother’s heirloom fine china. But when our real-life plates get broken, we don’t get to pick them. Sometimes it’s an accidental breaking, like the terrible time a cabinet holding some of my most precious china just fell right off the wall in the middle of the day. Thankfully it hurt no one except my heart as I gently gathered broken glass and ceramic and shattered sweet white china mugs rimmed with gold, a wedding gift from a beloved family member no longer with me, and carefully wrapped it in plastic only to throw it away. The devastation was too great to repair for most of them. Other times the breaking is less accidental as intentionality plays a part, whether by ourselves or by others, and we lose far more than our favorite mugs. But we also have the choice to repair the brokenness, don’t we? We can choose if a dish is worth salvaging, even though we know it will never look the same ever again. It takes work to fix a broken dish. The cracks have to be lined up just right. All the pieces have to work together to stay together. Some pieces can’t be salvaged because the pieces are just too small to fit back together. And then once it’s adhered together and dried, the beautification work begins. And the choice of the aesthetic is made. Gold? Silver? Or something altogether different? It’s a very important choice, the aesthetic. Whatever is chosen is what everyone else will see. They may not realize that there are even cracks if the aesthetic is applied well enough.

But you will know. 

And I had a silly thought – does the plate care that it was saved? That it was rescued from further damage in the garbage can? That it sits prominently on a stand in the china cabinet above all the other plates and saucers? Of course not. But I think the pieces of yourself, the pieces of myself and of the life that you and I have chosen to redeem do, in fact, matter. But for a while, it felt like they didn’t. It felt like I didn’t matter. I simply became a matter of un-mattering. It felt like God saw my little stone self, tossed mercilessly against all the rocks in a strong current, chipping and slowly sanding away my rough edges and just didn’t care. Like He saw my china recklessly fallen to the ground by a cabinet that couldn’t sustain the weight of it anymore and shattered into pieces and laughed at the misfortune of it all. But what if the stone turned smooth and the plate redeemed in gold was the entire intention to start with? A jagged rock isn’t hard to find. And it’s never pleasant when one is found with bare feet. But a smooth stone? Now that you can use! It’s hard to find a smooth stone and not want to share it with someone. “Feel how smooth this is,” they say. Smooth stones are seem somewhat prettier than the jagged ones, their color gradients blending together perfectly. And then if the water is calm, they gleefully attempt to skip it across to the other side. They give it away for some other wayfarer to find.

With joy. 

A beautiful piece of chinaware is greatly admired behind a glass case at a store. But a broken plate fixed with streams of gold running through its flaws and holding it together begs a story to be told. A life scarred with hurt and turmoil and frustration and how-long-oh-Lords is a life, nonetheless, meant to be lived, truly lived through every scratch, every fracture, and every lost memory tainted by grief. But it’s also meant to be lived through every smile, every warming of the heart, every comfort, and all hope for better things to come.

With joy.

By grace.

Every story of redemption isn’t just about hope, as I’ve come to realize in a new and different way. It’s really about joy. Joy in the narrow winding paths that seemed to lead into dark caves with no light. Joy in the straining to reach new heights of the mountains you were given to climb like Much Afraid in the book Hinds Feet on High Places. Joy in the companionship of grief and sorrow that accompanied you along the way that hurt your hands as they gripped you tightly. Joy in the laughter when you couldn’t cry anymore. Joy in the present, not just the future where an eternal weight of glory – perhaps the weight of a carefully curated collection of smoothed stones with stories to tell written by the author of creation – awaits.