If you have a bowl and you drop it and it breaks, you may have the ability to put it back together. The fixed bowl will still be able to function as a bowl, but it will look slightly different. It’s still a bowl, it still has the ability to do all the tasks required of a bowl, but it is altered. The change may be difficult to see. You may be a brilliant bowl fixer, therefore all who see the bowl are unaware of how badly it was broken, but the truth remains. The bowl broke. It is not the same bowl it was. It has cracks, it might be chipped in a couple places, the paint might be peeling. It has changed.

I have always hated change. Just ask my parents or anyone who helped raise me. As a kid, I got upset when my parents bought a new telephone for our house. We had a perfectly good yellow phone and they changed it to white. I was livid. Obviously, over the years I’ve had to learn to accept change as inevitable. Life changes. Seasons change. People change. Gone are the days when the most upsetting change was the color of a telephone. Ironically, for a girl who hates change, change itself has become the only true constant in my new world. 

When I think about who I am today versus who I was three years ago, the reality of my “change” seriously starts to set in. People always say, “When you’re at your worst, you have nowhere to go but up.” But that’s not true. The truth is that when you’re at your worst, you have two options: to change or not to change. To rebuild or to stay broken. To move or to stand still. You always have a choice. But here is the thing no one tells you… (aren’t you lucky that you’re reading my blog…cause I am about to drop some knowledge!) if you choose option A, if you choose to move to rebuild to “go up”, you will change. You. Will. Change. 

You can’t not change. You will grow. You will start from the depths of your own personal hell and you will look around and see pieces of yourself scattered in all directions. Once you have the energy, you will search until you have found all the pieces that you love best and you will start to put them back together. Over time, and perhaps unbeknownst to yourself, you will discover that you are a whole person again. You are still you, but you are transformed. Yes, you have cracks and chips and scars, those are inevitable changes. But, if you’ve let God guide your life, if you’ve been leaning on him, if you allowed his grace to carry you, then you’re change is beautiful. You aren’t just a broken person who is functioning again, you are a child of God who is flourishing. 

The downside to the new you is that a lot of people won’t understand. Some of your dearest friends won’t appreciate your wholeness. They won’t recognize what your cracks symbolize. They won’t be able to see that each crack has become a wound from your battle, and that you are no longer ashamed. You take pride in the crack that is crooked, but shows your strength. You have learned to love the crack that is messy, but shows your tender heart. You have learned to be grateful for the biggest crack of them all, that tells the world you are a lover AND a fighter. These imperfections are what you have grown to appreciate most about yourself, and so many will be blind. They will still see them as imperfections. They won’t realize these golden cracks are what make you beautiful. 

Personally, my change has definitely come with growing pains. I am not the me I was at the beginning of this saga, but how could I be? The old me was a great girl, a peach, a jewel. But so is the new me…she’s just a different girl, a different peach, a different jewel. How can anyone come out of the fire unchanged? My hope is that through this change I’ve grown. I hope I can say I’m closer in my walk with Jesus Christ. I hope when people meet me they see the love of God shine through me. I hope I’ve gained integrity and knowledge and grace. I hope that eventually my cracks will start sprouting a garden of all the beautiful characteristics that make up who I am. 

I am not a bowl. Fixing a bowl would be easier. I am not a telephone. Dealing with the adjustment of a new phone would be less dramatic. I am just a girl who likes tacos and who is finally learning to be thankful for her change. 

Romans 12:2 “And be not conformed to this world: but be he transformed by the renewing of your mind, that he may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”