Broken

Back from the beach. It was a nice, then stressful, then nice again trip. I won't bore you with all the details but it consisted of me having to buy a new cellphone, the hot water heater in our unit catching on fire and me coming home 2 days early with Colin, who had canker sores in his mouth and all down his throat.

We are all back together again now and Colin is on the mend.

But...that isn't what this post is going to be about.

On Tuesday Josh and I were walking along the beach collecting sea shells. I would run grab one then throw it back because it was broken. You see...I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I don't want my shells to have cracks in them. I want to find them intact. I've done this for as long as I can remember. I've gone to this exact beach every year since I was 6 years old and each trip I look for shells.

I noticed Josh running up ahead in the surf, picking up shells and putting them into his bucket. I caught up with him and asked to see the ones he had found. All broken. Pieces of shells but none of them intact.

I told him he didn't want those and we needed to throw them back but then he looked up at me and said, "But, I like them this way. I think they are beautiful."

I asked him why he thought that and after a minute he said that these shells had gone a long way through the ocean to get to the shore and had been bumped and cracked and broken and it was hard but they made it.

I let him run ahead to find more broken shells and it struck me what a great lesson he had given me.

We have all gone a long way through the ocean to get to the shore and we've been bumped and cracked and broken and it has been hard but we made it and God thinks we're beautiful the way we are.

So we came home from the beach with a bucket full of broken shells.

And I think they are beautiful.