My Broken Family

While living overseas, our family had several fortuitous opportunities to experience and explore both Europe and Africa. Unfortunately, traveling as a family of six on budget airlines with minimal luggage allotment meant almost ZERO space for souvenirs.

One time, however, we just had to make an exception. During our two years living in France, we were offered a chance of a lifetime to attend a conference in South Africa. Although still a 10-hour flight south across the entire African continent, we lunged at the opportunity positing, “Well, we’ll never live this close to Africa again –  let’s go for it!” (Geeesh! How wrong that assumption turned out to be!)

We stayed in the eerily deserted post-apartheid city of Johannesburg, visited the shanty towns of Soweto and the mostly white Afrikaans capital city Praetoria, and scouted for the “Big 5” on an African Safari in Kruger Park. I’ve been told I use the phrase “life-changing” too often, but South Africa truly WAS life-changing! (And now that I think about it, why would I want to participate in anything that doesn’t, in some way, change/improve me???)

Because South Africa soaked deep into our bones, I simply HAD to find a way to bring home some kind of tangible thing from that country.

After scouring the open-air market, I opted for a sculpture made from ebony wood. It’s a carving of a six-member family embracing one another in a circle. To me, nothing symbolized our family’s unity via our unique path in life better than that carving.

I gingerly hauled that unwieldy, lead-like, behemoth in my hand-luggage all the way “home” to France. It faithfully watched over us from its perch on our mantle for two years. Then I carried that hulking thing back to America in a padded handbag where it again found a home on our fireplace mantel. Three years later, the sculpture was one of very few decorative items to make the “cut” for our limited luggage space and accompany us on our move to Morocco. It was THAT special. Strangely, it felt like that carving carried some power of actually holding our family together as we bounced around the world.

Although ebony is wood, it’s extremely heavy, shiny and smooth so it looks and behaves more like stone, or even dense ceramic. And so, when someone accidentally knocked it off our fireplace hearth in Morocco, it crashed onto the tile floors and broke into at least 20 pieces.

For weeks, I mourned the loss of a “treasure.” But once I got a hold of myself, I decided that even if it’d look ridiculous, I’d glue the many pieces of my sculpture back together. And then it fell and broke into pieces again. And again. And again.

Today, my beautiful sculpture has more fault lines than the San Andreas.

However, I continue to proudly display this special carving in my home. It will always remind me of another place and another time when our family lived in faraway places and was as unified and whole as a family can possibly be.

I was dusting recently when I picked up the sculpture and the “Mom-piece” snapped off in my hand. My heart skipped a beat. I immediately felt this was a foreshadowing of my imminent death. For someone with a nasty lung disease, those thoughts are not entirely irrational. Pummeled with intrusive thoughts of how a dead mother would be better for my kids than a needy, sick mother, I moped around for days waiting for a lung to collapse (common with my disease) and death to ensue.

Which, (obviously) never happened.

I squelched those negative thoughts with a reminder that the sheer fact I wake up each day means I’m definitely supposed to still be here. In spite of this stupid lung disease that originally thrust a 10-year life-expectancy in my face, in a medically baffling twist, my life keeps drumming on rather normally 11 years later. I looked down at my pathetic ebony sculpture – which now looked like total garbage that most normal people would have decidedly chucked by now – and decided that I MUST, both literally and figuratively, stay attached to my people.

So, in a death-defying act, I grabbed the glue.

As I glued myself back onto the others in my family, I ran my fingers over all the cracks, fissures and holes and became overcome with emotion. I suddenly realized that this – THIS UGLY MESS OF A SCULPTURE – is eerily representative of our family today in REAL time.

I’m still not entirely sure how it happened, but over the last several years we’ve been battered, stretched and tested and I think every one of us has felt akin to this sculpture when it landed splat on the hard tile floor and broke into bits. We, too, have been feeling very broken. No longer representative of who we once were, and unsure of who we’ve become.

Of course, sometimes things break. Of course, relationships will take hits. Of course, we will find ourselves splayed open at times. Of course, we will not always be as shiny and polished and new as a freshly carved ebony sculpture sitting in a market in Johannesburg. That “shiny” moment, that “new-beginning” feeling, and that “unmarred” occasion is gone and cannot return. Similarly, life is always pushing us forward and beautiful new beginnings disappear in a breath. And there’s no rewind. Just forward. Just like life pushed our family forward from continent to continent, it also now moves us forward through changing seasons of relationships and our polish is getting worn down. Whenever we take the risk of relationship, we must accept there will be some falls that result in cracks. We’ll inevitably get hurt and we’ll inevitably hurt others.

If we’re alive, there’s no escaping the cracks on this pilgrimage.

Unexpected Cracks

No one tells you that this parenting gig gets harder when less “parenting” is actually involved. No one warns you that as middle-agers you don’t, in fact, get to just “hang out” until Jesus comes because the hardest relational work is still before you. As we attempted to figure out what life should look like at this juncture (Are we still parents? Are we just peers? Should we call? Should we give them space? Can I bring them lasagna?) and walk the thin line between overbearing and uninvolved, our kids described a sense of disorientation and disillusionment. We’ve had to work our way through difficult changes, challenges, and seasons of life that none of us anticipated or prepared for.

Yet, as I smeared Gorilla glue into the seam of the sculpture where “Mom” belongs, it hit me what a beautiful thing glue is.

When it comes to relationships, Gorilla Glue is “grace.”

Apart from grace, all people and all relationships would be laying in a big heap of ebony shards.

Grace means I see you, I know you, and I know your heart. And no matter how I’ve been hurt, I still want you in this circle with me and want to keep you glued on.

Grace means I do not have to fear making a mistake. If I do, I know you’ll pick me up and glue me back on.

Grace means if we disagree, there’s no risk of permanent separation because we have this glue. We will hold tight to one another agreeing that God gives us grace SO THAT two imperfect people can, in fact, get along.

Grace means if you forget my birthday or I forget yours, or if we don’t hold the same value to a family holiday or personal event or informal gathering, it’s okay – we’ll hand each other the glue.

Grace means that if I don’t text back soon enough, I won’t be exiled because we’ve got glue.

Grace is the substance that holds us together EVEN when the world suggests we walk away to “find ourselves” or tells us relationships are “toxic” when, in reality, they’re just NORMAL and require the NORMAL amount of hard work.

Grace says, “I know you didn’t mean it. You were just having a bad day.”

Grace says, “I know you love me. Even if I’m not feeling it today, I know it’s true.”

When your head hurts due to ugly crying from a conversation gone awry, or from a door-slamming fight, or from an overwhelming feeling of abandonment from someone close to you, grace is the calm that washes over you and gives you the strength to just let it go, or to make the phone call, or to offer the olive branch and go out for beers together, or to apologize (even if you’re 100%, without a doubt, absolutely sure, it’s not your fault).

Glue puts us back together no matter WHO snapped off and no matter WHY the break happened and says, “We’re better off together WITH cracks, then not together at all.”

Apparently, the Japanese figured this all out long before me:

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with a concoction of lacquer and gold, resulting in pottery covered in a web of gold cracks. The philosophy behind the practice says when a vessel breaks, the brokenness should never be disguised or give reason to cast off the piece, but instead, it should be recognized simply as a part of the history of the vessel. In fact, Japanese tradition posits pottery with lots of Kintsugi actually INCREASES in value.

Today, as a family morphing into a new season, we are less certain about who we are and what, exactly, our roles are in this stage of life. But we are seeping glue (grace) out of all our collective seams, and I’m pretty sure that means we’re worth more now than ever.

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