Broken Bits

Maybe it’s my “almost-an-empty-nester” stage but more and more I find myself taking stock of where I am in life, where I thought I would be at this age, and wondering what I will become in the future.  And of course those dreaded comparisons and regrets start creeping in.  The what-ifs and why-didn’t-I’s can all too easily overwhelm me and take away the joy of the present.

A while back I came across a line about allowing God to transform the broken places in your life into prisms.  Can’t you just see that?  What a beautiful word picture of redemption and hope.  That idea has been rolling around in the back of my head for a while and so I began to review my life again.  What if I start looking at my faults as prisms reflecting God’s beauty outside of my selfish little world?  How this happens I don’t know but I’m holding onto God’s goodness and grace and letting Him be in charge, or at least I’m trying to.

I love when God whispers His truth to me through my art.  I love it even more when I pay attention and actually listen.  Over the years I have collected quite a pile of broken eggs.  Some were completed and accidentally cracked.  Some didn’t turn out as I’d hoped and were abandoned partway through the process.  I couldn’t bring myself to toss any of them so they just sat in a drawer collecting dust.  Every time I opened the drawer they shouted at me that I had failed in some way.

Now what if I used those broken bits somehow?  Could I really transform them into something more?  After a lot of experimentation I can finally say yes.

These egg mosaics have been a challenge and a delight to create.  I’m still discovering new ways to improve my designs and having fun in the process.  Not only that, I will be teaching a class on this technique at the Pysanky USA retreat in Pennsylvania next week.

So this is what redemption looks like.