Sometimes I feel like I am on a never-ending quest towards Neverland, the land where dreams never come true. I have feared and felt I was doomed to live the fate of continually circling mountains of disappointment, roaming in my own personal wilderness; never to reach my promised land. The daily tension and beauty of life is remembering your past and maintaining a heart of gratitude in the present, while hoping for your future. Every setback on my journey I can either see as a confirmation of imminent failure, or as the backward thrust providing necessary momentum to propel me into destiny. I fight daily to choose and believe the latter.
Kintsugi is a Japanese art of repairing pottery by filling the cracks of a broken vessel with lacquer mixed with gold, silver or platinum. The value of the piece of pottery from the moment of repair, is no longer defined by it’s former brokenness, but by the gold within its cracks. What would happen if we viewed the disappointment and failures of our lives that way? What if we no longer defined our lives by the fault lines of our failures, but by the gold which sealed those things back together?
How do we achieve this? The Keys are: Love, Hope, and Gratitude. Love is the North leading us out of darkness into the light of our future. Hope fuels us to continue walking on our journey and it endures, because Hope trusts the heart of Love. Gratitude is the attitude, which empowers us to persist in the darkest of seasons. It is the lens which helps us see God has always been there, no matter how lonely, rejected or disappointed we may have felt.
As this year comes to a close, I challenge you to reflect. Reflect on the history of your life and how it has led to this very moment. See the cracks, the mistakes, the failures and the hurt through the eyes of Heaven. Your past can be a burden you bear, or a tool you wield in your hand. You alone have the power to flip the on-switch in the dark corners of your mind. You alone have the power turn what weighs you down into a weight that trains your muscles for the future you’ve longed for. I believe that God- Love- looks at our lives as beautiful masterpieces. Let the testimonies of your past, sustain you as you press toward your goals. You may not be where you want to be, but you’re not where you used to be. I believe we go from glory to glory, but we can only see that if we look at our lives through the lens of love. Let God and His perfect love pour over you and the broken bits of your life, to make you whole again. Let the glory of God be the gold in your cracks and may His love define your story.
God Bless,
K.Love
