Blessed are the broken

Running late, I fiddled with the last uncooperative string on my kimono as I eyed the heavy snow on my car. “Everything takes longer than I expect,” I complained.

“Doesn’t it always?” quipped my husband.

I had prepared for weeks for this, the tea ceremony portion of a New Year Japanese culture day for new missionaries. This would be my first tea ceremony event beyond casually hosting friends at home. I had attended weekly tea classes; held strategy meetings with Kei^*, my collaborator; practiced; chose utensils and kimono for the occasion; then practiced some more. Now, the morning of the event, I knew all that practice and preparation could not possibly substitute for a few more years of experience.

I pushed desks together to form a table for ryurei, a style of tea ceremony performed with table and chairs. The students would be there in half an hour! Where was Kei?

I set a heavy green and white Oribe tile in place to protect the table from the heat of the burner. This was one of Kei’s favorite pieces of tea ceremony equipment, one of many she had inherited from her mother. As I waited for the water to boil, I scrutinized the placement of the table. Wouldn’t it be better a little more to the left? I started to move the desks and crash—the precious tile shattered on the floor.

The organizer of the event heard my scream and rushed to my aid.

“Help,” I whispered, pointing to the shards of tile all over the floor. She got the vacuum while I carefully arranged the larger pieces on the desk. At least it was functional—the table would still be protected from the heat. I set the hearth and burner on top.

Kei arrived. Red-faced, I explained that I had been in a hurry and failed to notice that the tile was positioned over the crack between two desks. She smiled; it wasn’t all that important, she said.

The first group came in. “Is it customary to use a broken tile?” asked one eager student.

“No,” I answered through tight lips.

At my next tea ceremony lesson, I consulted with my teacher for advice on how to properly make amends for my failure. She walked me through the letter-writing process—there was a standard format—then sent me to her favorite shop to order a replacement for the tile. I checked the wording and grammar of the letter of apology with my Japanese teacher.

When the tile arrived a few weeks later, I delivered it with the letter. We talked and smiled, and I felt closer to Kei than before. She sent me home with a tea bowl in the same beautiful green color as the tile.

Meanwhile, the broken pieces of tile languished in the closet as I tried to forget about the whole experience. When my husband and I finished our first term and packed up for home assignment, the broken tile inexplicably got chucked in with the rest of the tea ceremony equipment bound for storage. We returned to Japan ten months later, and out came the tile again. I cringed. Why were we keeping this reminder of a shameful episode? I shoved the box to the back of the closet and forgot about it.

Shortly after that, the pastor of the church we were serving unexpectedly left. As my husband and I tried to mend the broken pieces he left behind, we both burned out. I could not do any kind of church ministry for over eight months. In that dark place, God pursued me when I didn’t have strength to pursue him. He spoke comforting words in the language of beauty and nature and art—my language—and I learned to keep my eyes open to find him in many places I hadn’t thought to look before. I felt reaffirmed in my calling to Japan as I began to see God’s love for me revealed in Japanese art forms like kintsugi and tea ceremony.

My long journey with kintsugi—the Japanese art of mending broken pottery—began at Tokyu Hands in downtown Sapporo. A humble cardboard box tucked in among the paintbrushes proclaimed that anyone could enjoy kintsugi. Images of molten gold and artisans with expensive equipment welled up in my mind. Kintsugi was something even I could do? Intrigued, I bought the kit. Maybe I could do something about that broken tile.

Kintsugi, I learned as I flipped through the instruction book, was much more than sticking together broken pottery with gold. The main ingredient was not gold, but Japanese urushi (a lacquer). The fine print on the side of the box contained a strict warning: the lacquer is made from a relative of poison ivy. Use this product carelessly, and you will get hurt. In the box I found two nail polish bottles filled with urushi, spatulas, rubber gloves, and an assortment of powders.

First, I had to seal the broken edges with urushi to keep the damage from spreading. I covered the dining room table with paper, checked the instructions, and pulled on rubber gloves. My hands shook a little as I opened the bottle marked “transparent urushi.” To my bewilderment, it wasn’t transparent; it was dark brown.

Painting urushi one broken edge at a time, I realized that God was doing the same kind of work in my life. Healing, like the art of kintsugi, is a long, slow process. God was not willing to skip the important step of cauterizing my gaping emotional wounds—the beautiful end product would come at the right time, not sooner. My prayer had no words; God and I sat in silence together doing the work of healing.

Two months passed as I waited for the urushi to dry and then waited for the motivation to continue.

To stick the pieces back together, I mixed flour, water, and urushi. The first two pieces clicked right in place, but as I added others, the edges got bumpy from the added bulk of the glue. I consoled myself with the thought that I couldn’t make the broken tile more broken, so I kept at it. I smiled as I remembered that God, the master craftsman, can be trusted with my healing; he’s not an amateur like me. He reassured me as I worked that he made me, and I was worth fixing.

I waited three more months until I found the courage to move on to the next step.

When I pulled the tile out again I saw that my haphazard glue job had not been a complete failure; no pieces fell off. I shaved off the excess glue with a razor blade and smoothed the edges with sandpaper. Chocolate-like crumbles of dried glue littered the kitchen table and the floor.

To fill the gaps left by missing shards, I mixed a paste of sawdust, cooked rice, urushi, and some powder with an undecipherable name. “Aim for the texture of your earlobe,” read the instructions. “How can you tell when you can’t touch the poisonous stuff?” I grumbled. The lumpy paste clumped all over the surface of the tile, refusing to be coaxed into the gaps. Tufts resembling rusty metal, not gold or silver, protruded from all the seams, but when they were dry a month later, these, too, gave way to my razor blade and sandpaper. God was scraping off what was unnecessary in my life, I reflected, to make room for something more beautiful.

With trepidation lest I leave a bald spot or a drip, I painted a thin layer of red urushi over the seams, an adhesive for the tin powder (gold was too expensive for an early attempt and a project of this size). I waited thirty minutes for it to set.

After nearly a year of working and waiting, the big moment: tin powder shimmered in the air and coated the table. Tin powder got lacquered to my thumbnail. Some of the tin powder found its way onto the damp urushi. After it dried, I brushed away the excess to reveal what looked like silver emerging from the cracks, not simply applied on the surface—mended from the inside out.

We imagine kintsugi as a consolation prize for those who are broken, as if some people are whole, and others have been “fixed.” But we are all broken; we all need spiritual kintsugi. Our choice is whether we will allow ourselves to be fixed or whether we will stubbornly remain a pile of broken pieces forgotten in the back of the closet. God showed me that he wants to heal us; he will meet us in our brokenness and show his love in ways that are unique to each one of us.

The tile is finished, and I am in progress. I’m learning through this long process to be patient with myself and with God. No rushing or shoddy workmanship allowed.

Blessed are the broken, for we will be mended.

*Name changed for privacy