*From the archives — first posted on December 17, 2023
Tuesday night the Christmas tree fell over. We picked out a big one this year, and it was too much weight for the stand. Some ornaments broke, including a couple that have sentimental value to me. One was a tiny golden angel floating in a clear orb. It belonged to my maternal grandmother. She died when I was young, and I don’t remember her well. I felt connected with her through the angel though. It also connected me to Christmases of years past, as I fondly remember hanging the set of floating angels on many childhood trees. The other broken ornament is a larger antique angel with colorful chipped paint. Her origin is less certain, although I think she belonged to an old friend of my mom’s who passed away long ago. She’s a timeworn beauty, and one of her delicate wings broke when the tree fell.
We righted the tree and weighed down the stand, so it’s stable now. I picked up the fallen ornaments and put them back on the tree. Even the broken ones. The tiny golden angel now flies outside of the orb. The larger antique angel floats with a broken wing. They still hold memories and connections and nostalgia through the years. They’re still beautiful.
Just like us.
We too are broken. We too are beautiful in our brokenness. We’ve been knocked over, rejected, and waylaid. We have our cracks, our wounds, our imperfections, our faults. We’ve been bolstered and broken and shaped by the variety of experiences that brought to now. We are complete in our brokenness, because we are formed by it. For better and for worse. We can wish that things had been different. We can grieve for what was lost, what could have been, what we needed and didn’t get. And still we persevere and shine in our brokenness. It reminds me this quote.
“she could never go back and make some of the details pretty.
all she could do was move forward and make the whole beautiful.”
—Terri St. Cloud
There was a time when I would have ruminated over the broken ornaments. I’d blame myself or someone else. Why did we get such a big tree? Was it screwed into the stand correctly? What happened? I used to focus more on the events and the why rather than acceptance and grief. And listen, I’m not a person who’s particularly attached to physical “things.” But this is bigger than things.
It’s about how we view brokenness. Do we focus on unattainable perfectionism? Do we resent cracks and fissures and mistakes? Do we resent the experiences that shaped our brokenness? The problem is that resentment and anger won’t heal our brokenness. We definitely need to feel the feelings, yes. The anger or sadness or resentment or jealousy or whatever it may be. Then we grieve. Then we forgive ourselves and others. That doesn’t mean that we accept wrongs as right. It just means we let go of the resentment. It means we move on as best we can. It means we let the light shine through.
Remember the frequently-quoted lyrics from Leonard Cohen’s famous song “Hallelujah:”
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
There’s no perfection. There’s no avoiding the cracks and bumps and missteps. There’s only us, imperfectly whole in our brokenness. Amen. Hallelujah.
***
As always, and especially during the busy holiday season, thanks so much for reading my words.
Gratefully,
Mary
P.S. If this post resonates with you, please tap the “like” button and/or leave a comment. You can “restack” a quote or share the entire post in Notes on Substack. As always, feel free to share on social media or forward the link to a friend.
Great essay, Mary!