Julie and I love to shop the outlet stores at the Legends Mall in Kansas City, KS. You can find some great deals but many of the clothes you buy come with a little tag on the inside that reads:
Slightly Flawed
Purchase As Is.
What is true in those discount stores is also true of you and me: we are all slightly flawed. We come “As Is.”
Maybe we should put a label on the inside of wedding gowns and tuxedos that reads “the wearer of this outfit is slightly flawed. You are marrying them today AS IS.”
Now, of course, every bride I have ever seen was beautiful, every groom handsome. But we come to each other in every relationship imperfect and flawed.
However, we can’t live without the other. Frederick Buechner said, “You can survive on your own. You can grow strong on your own. You can prevail on your own but you cannot become human on your own.” We need the other in order to be human.
To choose to love is to choose to live in the messy world of relationships. To choose to be in any relationship – marriage, neighbor, friend, parent-child, whatever it might be – is a risk. The decision to love is one that invites us to take a risk, to take a chance on suffering from a broken heart. This is not an easy choice but in the long run do we have any other option?
If you give your heart away it may be broken, wounded. But as the poet Antonio Porchia said, “To wound the heart is to create it.”
That may not sound like an easy road to walk but the ancient psalmist reminds us that God “heals the brokenhearted…”
When the world is broken and falling apart God moves into our lives and creates something new. God moves into the empty space in our souls and there in that formless void begins something new and marvelous. That, after all, is the story of creation. God isn’t waiting for you to get everything together. God is ready to move to the broken and empty places in your spirit and begin a new creation.
Grace and peace to you,
-Glen
