Beauty After Brokenness

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

—1 John 3:2

I’m more certain than ever that prayer is at the heart of transformation. And also that God’s will has a lot more to do with inviting us to become more than we previously have been than about getting us to one very specific destination.

I’m beginning slowly to recognize my own fears—why some changes are so scary for me, how the crazy-meter ratchets up little by little. I notice these things now and pay attention. When we pay attention and when we grow, we become freer, more flexible, more faithful, more able to ask for help. We become less fearful, more comfortable with the idea of life as a beautiful mess.

You want me to say that when you grow, finally, all the changes will stop, but they don’t. There will always be another one, another opportunity to grow, to shed your skin, to rise like a phoenix from the ashes, to break out of your cocoon like a perfect new butterfly.

The clichés and the references to mythology and classic literature fit, because we’re all trying to emerge new from the pain, beautiful after the brokenness, to live out that central image of Christianity: life after death.