One thing I appreciate about God is that He uses our mistakes for good. He takes the things we like least about ourselves and makes something positive out of it. He doesn’t expect perfection because he knows we can’t give perfection. We can only try.

And when we are feeling broken, dealing with the fallout of our choices (or the choices of others), God is still able to use us, use our lives, for His purpose. He’s able to make something beautiful out of our messy, complicated lives, and in doing so heals our hearts and seals them with His name.

In my last poetry book My Soul Is From a Different Place, I wrote a poem about this called “Our Beautiful Brokenness.” It’s about how differently God sees us from how we see ourselves. It’s about lives and hearts that are unbroken.

I’ve been thinking about this lately. Grateful for my healing through Him, and in one of my recent paintings I noticed the theme pop up again. It happens that way sometimes. I call this one “An Heart Unbroken.”

Our Beautiful Brokenness

What if at the end Jesus says
“Yes, you were right,
they were wrong,
and here is why it does not matter.”

What if you could
embrace the warmth of the sun,
feel the pull of the moon,
and see the living waters
of our world,
all from your perch
up on the brightest star.

What if Jesus
brushed your doubts away
like tiny specs of dust
on an old record,
and gave you a new song
to sing instead.

What if He could
show you His scars
and in them you see

His heartbreak
caused by each one of
your thoughts
of self-doubt.

What if I get to Heaven
and Jesus tells me
that the joke I’d told once,
the one meant to make
people laugh
but only ended up
offending them
really was funny.

He got it.

What if He tells me
I’m beautiful,
and does it in such a way
that I’ll never
have to look in a mirror again.

Beauty will be seen
in the soul,
not on the face.

What if Jesus tells me
that all those times I cried
and screamed His name,
He was there, holding me.

That if He hadn’t been there,
I would have run off,
done something crazy.

But instead, I cried for a while,
dried my tears,
and went back out into
the world that had hurt me.

What if I look back
on my life and see
my brokenness,
my path paved with mistakes,
and Jesus nods proudly
and says,

“Yes! Isn’t it beautiful?”

What if the why’s
of your life
were answered in an instant,
your understanding
the final gift
that allowed you
to finally feel His grace.

© Cherie Burbach, “Our Beautiful Brokenness,” My Soul Is From a Different Place, 2014