Sometime last year my wife started talking about the fact that everyone is both beautiful and broken. We can’t recall where she first heard it, and now we know several sources using it – including some that mean something different than what we mean by it.
I love the idea of beautiful and broken because it so perfectly describes our reality. No matter how much I mature, no matter how much I learn, I will always have broken places. Likewise, no matter how immature and broken someone is, they still have beautiful places if we will take the time to find them.
In ourselves, the struggle is two-sided: we must learn to accept our broken parts with compassion while not getting so comfortable with it that we stop trying to do better. We must also learn to accept our beautiful parts without becoming so enamoured of them we decide we are better than we are. If we miss the sweet spot on either of these we are less fun to be with than if we get it right.
With others, the struggle is much the same, but without the selfishness and/or self-disgust that messes with doing this in ourselves. When the other person is close to us, and especially when it’s our wife, we have significant self-interest at play, and that will cloud our ability to accurately see and appreciate their beautiful and broken places.
Are you giving yourself enough allowance for your broken parts? Are you giving too much? What about your wife’s broken places?
Do you allow yourself to see your beautiful parts? Do you focus on those parts too much? What about your wife’s beautiful places?
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Your Dying Spouse 239 – The Wet T-Shirt Contest ◄ As long as you can laugh together, it’s all good.
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10 Intimate Things to Enjoy for Christmas ◄ A nice list of intimate seasonal activities.
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Does Sex Matter in a Marriage? ◄ Julie has excellent thoughts on this question.
Journey to Surrender
Be a Haven ◄ Are you a haven?
…to Love Honor and Vacuum
10 Signs You’re Respecting Your Husband Too Much ◄ A lot of evil has been encouraged by calling it respect!
Great post, Paul, and I love the description, ‘the beautiful and the broken’.
It reminds me of a story, if you’ll indulge me. One day Barbara and I were in a Pier One store, when a child knocked over a large decorative ceramic plate, shattering it. The parents were aghast, and immediately offered to pay.
Overhearing this, I looked at the plate and saw something beautiful still, and so I offered to pay – full price – if I could have the pieces. The store manager thought I was crazy, but she accepted, and helped me find all the bits.
A few weeks and many tubes of ceramic glue later, the plate was whole again. There were voids, of course, and the scars of its experience, but it now sits proudly in its stand, a tangible testimony to the fact that broken and beautiful are not mutually exclusive.
http://blessed-are-the-pure-of-heart.blogspot.com/2016/12/your-dying-spouse-240-and-god-is-still.html
When I first read this, I was really drawn to comment. There are a thousand things I could say about it, some in absolute agreement, and some in vehement disagreement.
I wrote a similar piece not long ago, that one of the biggest privileges of marriage is the opportunity to view our spouses closest to how Christ sees them, than any one else. We see more of the good, and more of the bad (beautiful & broken) than agreement most you other person.
The truth is that while that might be true, it might also be that our hearts are not pure or strong enough for what we might see sometimes, and try as we might to Love perfectly despite the broken, sometimes our own brokenness gets in the way of that.
BudekSchmeisser A bit of low-cost Kintsugi – I like it!
Man without a Map Yes, my brokenness can keep me from seeing and treating her brokenness as I should. Fortunately, He is there to help me with that too.