Healing Our Broken Pieces

By Lisa Smithen

Just a couple weeks ago I broke a container and glass shattered and went everywhere, resulting in me spending a lot of already limited time cleaning up the area to ensure that no one got hurt by the jagged edges or fell over the mess that I had made. Life is like that sometimes. Sometimes we cause a lot of inconvenient damage and destruction to our own lives. I am not saying that other people don’t play their part…even Mother Nature can run havoc through your life, leaving you with no say [Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria have all showed how destructive nature can be, and the victims were all innocent to their wrath]. Through the many opportunities I have been given to examine and re-examine life [Yes, I can over analyze Anything on the planet if given an hour of free time – (some people may say ten minutes), and a cup of tea/ glass of wine], the lessons/stories/experiences have allowed me to develop a different appreciation of life especially regarding the aspects of breaking and stripping down in the process of creating something new.

So, my questions to you are, What do you do with your broken pieces? What do you do when things have not gone the way you planned or expected them to and all you are left with are the pieces of your dreams and your expectations? What do you do with the pieces that haunt and hurt you as those around you hold them over you like ghosts to your loss of possibilities? What do you do? It is all good to tell someone that everything happens for a reason and they need to move on. But that pill isn’t so easy to swallow when your personal soundtrack has chosen to go on repeat, and the sound of the continuous blood curdling shattering of what was once whole, plays on. The pill isn’t easy, as it’s hard to feel anything positive when your limbs ache or your hands bleed from everything that was done. It is hard to see beauty when all you can see when you look in the mirror, are the reminders of the mistakes you made, and the actions of others determined to tear you down.

What do you do with the broken pieces? There may be a few ways to look at it. Yes, it would be easy for me to sit here and type a few words about how you should just get over the brokenness. But what if you are not supposed to just get over it? What if we turned it around and instead of running for cover, chose to acknowledge the brokenness with all its funk? And along with this acknowledgement, what if we chose to hand the fragments over? I am not trying to imply that giving up control and handing over what you couldn’t control in the first place to someone else is going to be easy. I suspect that it may be quite difficult for many people, but just because something is difficult does not mean you should fear and run from it.

Note, I am not minimizing your wounds and broken pieces to something trivial. But, what I am suggesting is that when your hands are already bleeding from the broken shards of the memory of what was…what should have…and what may have been….maybe you can consider the possibility of handing it over. And not just to your gossiping friends, who can only offer you empty words, but to your Deity, your Creator, the actual force who is truly capable of making a significant difference and change. You know the One who has always had to either mend, mold or recreate newness out of all the drama that has been humankind from the beginning of time. With a proven track record like that, I would gladly hand over the broken pieces for myself, my family members and a few friends all at the same time. That type of reputation gives you the peace of mind that allows you to unpack every tear, every emotion, every lost opportunity leaving them by the foot of the cross while shouting out, “I need your help, I am hurting, I need you to step in and take this burden from me.”

Now that you have handed over your broken pieces and your tears have all dried up, what are you planning to do next? I hope that you are not prepared to just stay stagnant and refusing to take another chance at living. You can’t stop there, you must go further. You see the thing is, if you stay here you won’t grow, and when we don’t grow we don’t exist. So, to ensure movement and to fully recover, you must first pull up your big girl panties and be fully honest and transparent with yourself. This is where you must acknowledge the role that you have played in your own story no longer hiding behind the narrative of what “they” did and what “they” did and what “they” tried to do. You can’t remain comfortable looking at life with blurred eyes. Instead you have to clean up the tinted reflections of reality by looking at your image and confessing that “I messed up, I did this to myself, I did not respect myself enough, I accepted less than I should have, (and my two favorites), I did not believe in myself enough, I did not work hard enough.” Continuing to lean on the edges of the memory of the broken glass, while blaming everything and everyone but yourself, is not going to help you heal. In reality, you are simply cutting yourself on the edge of insanity [The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results…Albert Einstein] These may be hard words to read because you may still be hurting or living through the grief of your “shoulda…. coulda…woulda”. But know that I have been there, and I know that the edge is a dangerous place to remain. It does not make us terrible people – no one walking on this earth is perfect. There is no shame in accepting that you made mistakes. The shame comes when we allow our pride to override common sense and then allow it to delay our growth in life.

With growth in mind, I hope that you can begin to move away from the edge and release your broken pieces so that, in time, all you are left with are mosaic pieces. If you are in the process of releasing or you have already found your mosaic pieces, leave a comment/send me an email. Together we will inspire each other.

Read more from Lisa at The Uncaged Phoenix Blog