No Mold for our Brokenness

My first "real" job was as the administrative assistant at a good sized real estate company in my home town. I had just graduated from high school and was headed off to college that fall, but needed some work for the summer.

I was replacing a soon-to-be-retired older lady who had held the position of office admin for many years. She had her job down to a science and trained me on all the ins and outs of the real estate world. We hit it off pretty well and became friends.

In the process of getting to know each other, I learned she was a ceramics artist. In her possession were hundreds of ceramic molds, used for casting all sorts of various ceramic creatures, vases, and other objects. Having just moved to a new house, she needed help transporting them safely and I volunteered.

I didn't quite know what I was in for. Each heavy, white chalky mold had to be carried individually with utmost care so it didn't get chipped. She explained to me that even the smallest chip in the mold could ruin a future casting. After several hours, we finally finished transporting the molds and she treated me with a trip to Sonic as a way to say thanks.

I'm not sure why this memory has stayed buried for so many years (16 to be exact!), but it came to me tonight at the grocery store of all places. There was a heavy-set man in the deli area, carefully inspecting some overpriced pre-packaged crab cakes. I must have gotten my cart a little too close to him because he moved quickly on, apologizing for blocking my way.

"It's fine," I said. "I'm in no hurry."

"Oh, I know how it works here," he said. "You gotta keep moving along and stay outta people's way."

This made me feel sad and I wish there had been something else I could have said to let him know he really wasn't in my way or any bother at all.

Then, when I got to the checkout line, I noticed the guy ringing up my groceries had a black eye and half his face was bruised and swollen. I immediately tried not to let him think I was looking at it. And even though I really wanted to ask if he was okay, I instead launched into the story of how I was nervous to show my face at that particular store after breaking a huge bottle of wine in the checkout line during my last visit.

He told me it was okay, that it happened just about every day.

As I left the store, my heart felt so heavy for the two guys I had encountered. Without knowing any of their stories, I just felt like maybe each was carrying his own heavy load.

What does this have to do with my memories moving the ceramic molds? My encounters at the grocery store got me thinking about molds. How each mold was created to form just the exact right ceramic casting you wanted to create. And how if even a small chip got in the mold, it would potentially ruin the piece of art.

There's no mold for our brokenness in life. Each little chip we've gotten over the years causes us to look a tiny bit different from each other. And over time, our brokenness changes us in big ways. The only uniform thing about brokenness is that we all have it. From the ones of us who don't know where tonight's meal is coming from to those of us who just polished off a fancy steak dinner.

We try so hard to shine ourselves up and put our best versions forward.

What looks like perfection, right down to the Ralph Lauren 400 thread count sheets, is often falling to pieces around us. Each of us carries our hurts inside. And sometimes those hurts are so big, they take up more than their fair share of space, squeezing and pushing their way out, causing us to transfer them, hurting the ones around us.

You can never know what kind of hurt someone is carrying just by looking. Even with the ones you feel closest to or think you know best.

Seeming like you have it all together is not indicative of reality much of the time. The ones who get dressed up and sit quietly in the church pew, singing "Holy, holy, holy" in full voice are often the same ones who come home and cry in their driveway, yell at their dog, or snap at their husband. Let's just say I would know.

I don't believe God causes our suffering or wants us to hurt. I do believe our brokenness can help us love each other better and understand each other more.

But we have to acknowledge it. To give it a name and let it be.

This can be hard when so many things about our lives seem good. I often get mad at myself for focusing on any sort of problems or challenges because I think "My issues are not nearly as bad as the next person's. I haven't really earned the right to feel this way." 

I think this is dangerous because it keeps us from acknowledging our truest feelings and hurts. Even if there's nothing we can do about them. We just never know when something we experienced can cause us to have a unique perspective and maybe even offer a tiny bit of comfort to someone else going through the same thing.

And then, even in the midst of the brokenness, a little beauty can grow.

For the little girl with the eye patch.

Dear little girl at Chik-fil-a with the pink, leopard eye patch,

First of all, you totally rocked it. I watched you playing with your grandma and that patch didn't seem to faze you at all. I wish I could have said the same for myself at your age when I had to wear one of those things. My patch was black and in the 80s, being a pirate wasn't quite as cool as it is now.

Actually, my grandma would let me sneak and not wear my patch when I was at her house, especially when we were playing Barbies.

I'm not sure why you have to wear a patch over your eye. The reason I had to wear one was my eye was lazy, which also caused one lens of my glasses to be much thicker than the other. The problem with telling a kindergartner that she has a lazy eye is she doesn't have the wisdom or wherewithal to understand that it isn't some kind of pronouncement about you as a person. Having a lazy eye doesn't make the rest of a person lazy.

I have spent the past 30 years trying to prove that. Why they couldn't have called it a butterfly eye or a mermaid eye or something without such a negative connotation is beyond me.

Maybe soon you won't have to wear the patch anymore. Perhaps you'll have identical twin pairs of plastic glasses, one pink and the other purple, just like mine were. I hope a boy in the 2nd grade doesn't call you "big eyes" because the magnification is so strong.

If your glasses slide down, go ahead and push them right back up, whether with your finger or by wiggling your nose. This is how I've coped for years, causing my family to coin a term for my nose-wiggle-glasses-pushing maneuver..."the snurl."

Sadly, you'll probably never get to know Molly, a bespectacled, but now discontinued member of the American Girl doll family. She might not have had frizzy hair like me, but her fate of having to wear glasses all the while planting a victory garden and staying positive in the face of World War 2 made me feel like I, too, could overcome hard things.

Contacts can be a good option, maybe in the 5th grade when your parents think you are mature enough to care for them properly.

But maybe you'll move to another town for college, a place where the air quality is terrible and your allergies act up and you can't wear contacts anymore.

You just might find that glasses aren't such a bad option after all, what with all the new styles available.

I hope you find someone to love, who loves you and doesn't care that your eyes are sometimes hidden behind thick lenses. And maybe one evening, you'll absentmindedly leave your glasses at home, and your sweetheart will keep looking at your over and over saying, "what is different?" And finally he or she will realize that you look different because for once, you aren't wearing your glasses.

"I kind of like that you aren't wearing your glasses because it lets me see your pretty eyes," he will say. "But I like it when you wear your glasses too." 

It won't be an issue. But clearly, it already isn't because you seem to be doing just fine. And so am I.

Where I'm from.

This bit of writing (see below) was inspired, like so many others, by the original Where I’m From poem by Ms. George Ella Lyon, a writer and teacher who was lucky enough to be in-real-life friends with Tennessee poet Jo Carson. Carson’s work Stories I ain’t Told Nobody Yet is what inspired Lyon to write about where she was from, which happens to be Kentucky.

I recently attended a writing conference where one of the speakers led the group through an exercise to write our own versions of this poem. The only problem was, she wanted us to visualize one meaningful place that had significance in our childhood. I have trouble picking just one.

There were so many places that helped form me, so many people who shaped me, so many things that made me. While it would be impossible to give proper mention to all of them, I wanted to try and shed some light on some of the important ones.

What Makes Me

by Kate Spears 

I am from the shirt factory, the tobacco field, the homestead and the barn loft.

I am from places that many people want to leave, but still there are others who stay. I am from people who picked up and moved. I am from people who put down roots and remained. I am from people as loyal as the day is long, and others who are fickle and change their mind with the seasons or whatever way the wind is blowing.

I am as loud as a fire-and-brimstone preacher and as quiet as a patient fisherman who understands the success of the day is the day itself, not what’s in the bucket.

I am from drawstring bags made of felt and filled with polished silver, from weathered barns piled high with junk that somebody else has to sort through after you die.

I am from green stamps, clipped coupons, and buy-one-get-one-free. I am from store-brands, and dented cans, Goodwill clothes and yard sale Tupperware. I am from waste nothing, want everything, and all you get out of life is what you enjoy.

I am from porches covered in Kelly green indoor/outdoor carpet. I am from pink formica countertops and kitchens that because there is no proper ventilation, smell of fried potatoes, cabbage and salmon patties long after the last bite has been eaten.

I’m from Levi Garrett, Kent Golden Light Kings, Vantage Ultra Light 100’s, and Marlboro Reds.

I am made of Mountain Dew, vy-eenie sausages, white half-runner beans, and red-eye gravy. Of honeysuckle and wild blackberries, poke sallet, hydrangeas and fried apple pies.

I’m from people who sang Amazing Grace, from people who sat on the back row of the church, and some who never darkened the door.

I’m made from people who washed feet, worshiped under the brush arbor and ate dinner on the ground.

There’s a tall maple tree outside my kitchen window. And soon, the helicopters will flutter away. My tree was once a helicopter growing on a tree that was also once just a helicopter. And back, and back, and back.

And so it goes for the things that make us. Nothing is new. Everything is a part of everything else. You carry it all with you so that one day, it will grow again.

Why I'd Make a Terrible Baptist Missionary

I ran across these vintage postcards on a website I like to visit and they took me back to my childhood growing up in a big baptist church in Tennessee. Each Sunday, my family would deck out in our finest and go to our respective classes for Sunday School before the main church service. 

I loved Sunday School because it was a lot of like regular school and I was kind of a nerd who loved that sort of thing. Since our church was pretty big, there were enough kids to divide us up into all-girls, all-boys and co-ed classes for each age group. 

I usually preferred the all girls class and was often the teacher's pet. One of my favorite Sunday School teachers was an elderly man named Mr. Dunn who let me read the lesson and each accompanying scripture verse every week. He said I had a nice, clear reading voice and I'm sure the rest of the kids in the class gave a collective groan even though I ate it up. 

Down the hall from my Sunday School class was a big supply closet where all the teachers' books and curriculum materials were kept. In that closet were stacks and stacks of postcards with little messages and cute images on them. These cards were meant to be sent to other kids that we might know to invite them to come to church. 

I guess you could say that a regular part of my Sunday School experience was outreach. Baptists are all about going out into the world and preaching the gospel to all people, and I guess that included the people in our community who might want to receive weekly post cards inviting them to church.

My Sunday School teacher had a big list that contained names and addresses of kids who had visited our church up to that point and each week, we'd spend some time dividing up the list and sending each person a card. Which I guess is a nice thing to do. Our teacher would give us each a stamp for our assigned card and when they were ready to mail, I'd take them down the stairs and outside to the big blue mailbox in the parking lot of the post office next door (I told you I was the teacher's pet).

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Except I knew most of the kids on the list from school. And many of them had only visited one time because they spent the night with another kid from my church or some other situation like that. I knew in my heart that they probably weren't going to visit again with any intentions of joining our church. So in many ways, I felt like sending these cards was a big waste of a stamp.

Then I got the bright idea that I could make this whole situation work for me. 

You see, my grandparents lived in Knoxville which was about a hundred miles away. 

And back then (before cell phones and computers), calling long distance was a big deal. And even though I liked writing them letters, we never seemed to have stamps at our house. So often, I'd write more letters than I could ever send. 

What can I say....I saw my opportunity and I seized it. I began sending my Sunday School outreach postcards to them. Every week, I'd write as small as humanly possible to fit as much about the latest and greatest happenings in my life on that little card. Then I'd stick my free stamp on it and send it off to my grandparents. 

My teacher never knew (or at least I don't think he did). And honestly, I didn't even feel bad about it. I figured it was better to send card to someone who actually wanted to get it than to someone who was just going to throw it away. I wonder if my grandparents ever thought it was odd that I invited them to Sunday School about 20 some odd times.

And that is why I'd be a terrible Baptist missionary.