“May all your broken pieces which feel so scattered now be
reassembled into a mosaic of beauty. May your healing reveal the art of who you
really are.”
John Mark Green
Picasso isn’t for everyone.
Some of us see a monstrosity; some of us only see an elbow
sticking out of an ear.
Some of us see his work as art at its finest.
They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Extraordinary things can arise from the ashes.
They say all of that. But is all of that truly true?
Pain is beautiful.
No one gets out of this life unscathed. And, generally
speaking, no one really enjoys pain. But pain is inevitable. It reoccurs,
wearing many different faces. It can be abuse, trauma, death, loss, divorce,
failure, and change, just to name a few of its manifestations.
Now, I’m not talking about having an unhealthy dependency on
dysfunction. We should seek to get help in mind, body, and spirit. Therapy,
learning healthier coping tactics, and accepting ourselves unconditionally
should be employed, but not at the expense of denying how much the pain,
whatever pain it was, has affected and shaped us.
Nope, we are not “all better” lickety split. We are bleeding
and scarred, sometimes lifelong. And we can often view that as moral failure
and a defect in our character.
It is not.
It is pain. And pain is difficult, excruciating… and
beautiful BECAUSE we have survived the pain. We got out. We made
changes. We simply kept breathing.
Pain often gets associated with ugliness because it assumes the
worst- case scenario will be the only, final word for us.
But there is beauty from the ashes. There is.
Think about how you have blossomed, and, if you are
struggling to see that in yourself, please remember the Lotus Flower. It blooms
in the mud. The incredible, delicate, commanding creation blooms in spite of.
The flower is not supported by a loving gardener, in a tranquil rose garden. It
is not spoken lovingly to by that gardener, affirming it of its inherent
beauty and worth. Its beauty is non-negotiable, and flourishes in muddiness, in
dirtiness, in filth.
How many of us have grown in mud?
How many of us have felt nothing but dirty our entire lives?
You are not filth. You’re a Lotus Flower.
And your pain can be transmuted into healing, first,
for yourself, then for others who believe they are alone in their
suffering.
There is a reason you painfully bloomed. There is a
reason.
Mistakes (sins) are beautiful.
This one makes us all squirmy, doesn’t it? Especially for us
“people of faith” out there. We are shamed for sins and imperfections,
repeatedly told how we are nothing but wrong, hopeless, and unacceptable. Love,
forgiveness, mercy, and grace seem to be in short supply, sometimes,
nonexistent.
I suppose sin is ugly for the pain and the harm it inflicts.
And, whether or not you and I view sins and mistakes as one and the same, there
seems to be such emphasis in the sin or the mistake as being an inevitable, irrevocable,
punishing death sentence. We can absorb lies that tell us we are forever
bad, forever ruined, forever wrong, and forever shameful.
We are human beings. We make mistakes. We sin. And while
we’re doing all that, we still have value. We do not need to forfeit
love and redemption, because we’ve “gone too far.”
No one avoids doing things that are wrong, pathetic,
shame-inducing, of poor judgment; no one avoids doing things that are hurtful
to others.
Just because we have wound up “there” (in the place of
whatever debauchery or evil we think is just too damning to recover from), doesn’t
mean we will stay there our entire lives.
All things are subject to change. That includes you and me.
Our shortcomings have devastated and changed us. But we are more than any one
mistake or sin.
We are the whole mosaic, not just a colorful piece that
appears to only look awful.
There is more. We are more.
Growth is beautiful.
Anyone who has ever tried to grow out their hair knows all
about the struggle of the awkward stages. Whether we grow out the entire
mophead we’re wearing, or simply intend to rid ourselves of our fringy bangs, so
we can see our naked foreheads again, these awkward growth stages can appear
ugly to us. We can grapple with a no man’s land of being neither here nor
there. We don’t quite have short hair; we don’t quite have long hair. Gone are
the obvious tidy bangs; but they don’t steer clear of our foreheads completely,
often flapping annoyingly against our faces, like the wings of a rabid bat.
(And don’t get me started on trying to wear a
ponytail).
Growth is beautiful. But there is a major difference between
that assertion and the feelings which are attached to the
process. That often feels ugly, painful, difficult. We can often associate
beauty with ease. Therefore, we can believe that if something is not
easy, it is not beautiful.
We can view the struggle as negating. Beauty is not solely
about joy, giddiness, and effortlessness. We do ourselves a disservice if we
believe that premise.
If we see the struggle, the hard work, and the tenacity, instead,
as the true beauty, regardless of what it looks like, we can take stock in how
far we have come, even if it doesn’t look like a beautiful, promised land
destination.
We are getting there, nonetheless.
The getting there, not the arrival, is the
thing of beauty.
And, since we are not finished human beings, we are
constantly beautiful. That is the ongoing mosaic.
(With or without bangs).
Acceptance is beautiful.
I am 5 foot, 4 inches tall. I will not get any taller. There
are no more growth spurts in my future (believe me, I checked).
With time and age, I will only shrink,
(Sigh).
I once had a dream in which I kept standing on chairs and
some judge-y chair-type panel of “experts” kept telling me, “Nope, still not
tall enough.”
“Not enough.”
We are driven by those two words, aren’t we?
And, when we are not, we seem to be harangued by the
words’ evil twin, “Too much.”
No matter which voice is coming at us, it pummels us with how
we need to reject, not accept, ourselves.
We do it in big and small ways. We do it, perhaps, because we
want beauty in our lives. We want to possess it, control it, activate it, and
believe it will always be there. We don’t want to be abandoned by it.
We seem to attach so much power to the enough of beauty. It
represents perfection, doesn’t it? And, often, this elusive beauty guarantees
that we will finally be worth accepting.
Unless and until, however, that happens, we are obligated
to reject ourselves.
After all, how dare we believe we are enough when we
look at our lives, and only see the ugliness of shortcomings, failures, and what
we deem to be personal ugliness?
What is screaming or whispering to you that you need to
reject yourself?
What is preventing you from accepting yourself RIGHT NOW?
A body size? A skin color? A physical characteristic? An
income? A relationship status? An achievement? A fear?
I will not be a tall woman. I will not be statuesque, unless,
of course, it’s a short statue.
Over the course of my life, thus far, I have learned it’s not
important in the grand scheme of things. I have almost lost my life a few times
to bring that point home. Eating disorders and breast cancer were some
attention getting lessons that taught me I need to appreciate my “vertically
challenged,” breastless, imperfect, vulnerable, sometimes irritating, and
frustrating self, while I still have the breath to do it.
And I still have the breath to do it.
So, I am tall enough. I am enough, even when I struggle with
the “too much/not enough” voices that tell me otherwise.
I accept all the flaws. I’m still breathing.
That’s powerful, because many people are not.
I’m still here, and if I’m too short to reach something, I’ll
stand on a chair.
Putting the Puzzle Together: Mosaic…Masterpiece… Me:
How about you?
Want to accept yourself, as is, right now?
Want to embrace your mosaic?
The flaws, the “too much/not enough” of your experience, and
the learning of your enough-ness, however long it takes to learn, are all
beautiful artistic mosaics, as a most important creation.
“May all your broken pieces which feel so scattered now be
reassembled into a mosaic of beauty. May your healing reveal the art of who you
really are.”
John Mark Green
Thank you, Mr. Green. I pray your words for ALL of us!
Copyright © 2021 by Sheryle Cruse
“Mosaic of Beauty” challenges each of us to accept ourselves as
true masterpieces.
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