Glass.  Glass everywhere.

 

I stood still in my kitchen, indisposed to shock.  I had reached into the cabinet with the intention of removing a plate, but somehow, I had knocked down an entire stack of ramekins, inviting them to rest on the floor in thousands of microscopic pieces.

 

I stood there, unsure of what to do, because I was unsure what had just happened.  I replayed the scene over in my head, attempting to piece together exactly what had just gone on.  In a daze, I reached my arm up again, mimicking the almost mechanical nature in which I had done it in the first place.

 

My eyes were wide and fixed— it was if my body was operating not as its own, but rather as if it was on autopilot.  I had reached into that cabinet without thinking.  Hundreds of times, my arm had followed the same route with entirely different results.  However, this time, despite being no different in nature, the same robotic, unattached, unfocused gesture proved detrimental to my dishes.  What had happened?

 

My gaze fell to the floor again.  I surveyed the damage and only became more confused as I did.  Some of the ramekins had fallen onto the counter below, sending shards flying across my kitchen.  Some of them had made their home on the floor, breaking into smaller pieces, and shattering across my living and dining room.  Oh no, the dining room.

 

Before I could preoccupy myself with tracing any more of the path of destruction, my eyes fell to the white shag rug under my kitchen table.  There was one large chunk of jagged glass laying face down in the carpet, surrounded by smaller, finer, more delicate pieces of glass, as if to crown it king of my misery.  My heart fell and my pulse quickened.  I am never going to get that out.

 

I stood in the kitchen for a ridiculous amount of time, wondering what I was going to do.  I could sweep the floor, or I could vacuum.  I could even use the smaller vacuum to get most of the glass up.  I could do a lot of things, but no matter what I chose, there would always be glass in that carpet.

 

I stared intently at the rug, my eyes boring holes into its seams.  It didn’t seem to matter what I thought about doing, I could not find a way to rid that long-haired shag of the shards of glass that now called it their refuge.

 

With bare feet, I tip toed out of the kitchen and into my room.  Confusing emotions were flooding in and I could feel the tears burning in the back of my eyes.  Hastily, I pulled socks and shoes on over my cold feet.  I wrapped a thick wool jacket around my body, pulling it close so that I could experience a semblance of comfort.  I walked back to the front of my house, and with one swift gesture, I scooped up my keys.  I took one last look at the glass on the ground and in the carpet and walked out without looking back.

 

 

 

 

I felt like getting out: getting away.  I could feel emotions bubbling up inside of me: big, scary, overcoming emotions; and albeit not knowing what they were or where they were coming from, I knew that I wanted nothing to do with them.

 

I drove around town, running errands and finding ways to manufacture needs that needed to be fulfilled.  I found ways to busy myself but, eventually, I could not find any more.  Eventually, I arrived right back where I had left, in my dining room staring at the broken glass.

 

All the sudden, as if I had been struck by a bolt of emotional lightening, my feelings burst out of me.  I steadied myself on the bar, feeling dizzy and overwhelmed.  I laid my hand over my chest, clutching my aching heart, closing my eyes to escape from the reality I was facing.  I looked at that broken glass, and I felt like a failure.  I looked at the graveyard of half a dozen glass bowls smashed to pieces around me, and I felt like I had failed my children.

 

I had no husband, I had no children, but in that moment, I had failed them both.

 

It was a peculiar feeling— feeling inadequate as a mother despite having no children.  But every time my shameful gaze met that floor, the feelings rushed up in me again.  I lowered myself to the floor, sitting amongst the debris, unaffected.  I sat there and cried, like I am sure I will do many times in the future, because the only reasonable solution that I could find was to throw out the whole carpet.

 

Somehow, in the hurt and the fear that tormented my soul, it equated to me failing as a mother.  Somehow, I knew that if I couldn’t find a way that didn’t end in starting over, that I would fail as a wife.  Somehow, I allowed a few broken bowls to encompass me in fear and sorrow.

 

I looked at the rug to my right.  I hated that rug.  It was white at one point in time, but years of traffic and abuse sullied it.  It’s once creamy and soft texture had become matted in some places and bare in others.  It was impossible to clean because of the composition of its fabric, so it had many a foul memory embedded into its fibers.  Still, my chronically cold feet loved the feel of the warm woolen floor beneath them, despite its rather unappealing qualities.

 

So, for entirely too long, that shaggy rug had remained in my dining room, taking up space.

 

I never did have the heart to toss it.  I wanted a new rug, but I never allocated money to buying one.  I just kept telling myself that I would get rid of it when I moved from this home to another.  Yet months passed and still it remained.  Time dragged on and on, and that carpet stayed motionless in the same place.  I wouldn’t buy a new rug, but I also wouldn’t toss the old one and leave my floors bare.

 

I was caught and I didn’t know what to do.  I was stuck and I couldn’t make amends.

 

My heart, still hurting, called to the Lord.  I knew that this was something far deeper than a ruined rug.  My heart, broken and weeping, called to the Lord for help.

 

I called and He answered.

 

 

 

 

Crying on the floor, I asked God why. It seemed simple in question but loaded in measure.  Why did I feel like a failure?  Why was I so afraid?  Why did everything come falling down?

 

Just as suddenly as the emotions flooded in, the revelation did too.

 

Everything was falling down.

 

In a way that was entirely beyond my control, in a way that was unexpected and unwanted, everything started falling down.  It was not something that I could control.  I was not in control.

 

My head started throbbing and, for a moment, I forgot about the pulsing pain in my chest.  I looked at the glass around me and I knew.  Those ramekins shouldn’t have fallen.  They shouldn’t have come down.  How eight of them fell to their death when my hand was nowhere near them was no longer a mystery.  It happened, not because I caused it to happen, but because I wasn’t in control.

 

I heaved heavily.  My breaths were becoming labored in essence and I realized that this fear within me was born of something entirely more complicated and far deeper than I first suspected.  All of the sudden, a download of information came boring into my spirit.

 

I wasn’t afraid of being a bad mother or being a bad wife or breaking dishes or cleaning rugs.  I was afraid of being out of control. I was afraid of being out of control.

 

Memories from this year— memories of letting go and purging my life of abusive people and places and trends— all flooded in, weighing on my heart.  Most of the year had been getting rid of things… getting rid of people who didn’t agree with the value God said that I had and getting rid of structures meant to keep me bound.  So much of this year was about throwing things that brought death and harm out— all because I wanted to be a better wife, mother, friend, and minister one day.

 

I had gotten rid of so much that I didn’t know if I could get rid of much more.

 

I felt out of control.

 

I saw the desolation that I was living in— destruction directly related to who and what I was allowing in my life, and I knew that I had to get rid of it.  At the beginning of the year, I was enveloped in darkness and depression.  I was living in a culture that invoked and invited shame.  I was surrounded by people who counted sins and despised authority.  I was cut off from family and accustomed to degradation. I was drowning; I was left without a voice to speak up against the iniquities that led to me capsizing in the water.

 

I was so used to abuse.  The depths of my life were penetrated by abusive narratives… mothers, fathers, brothers, friends: abuse overtook my life.  I had grown so used to abuse that, much like that detestable rug, I had begun to tolerate it, attributing false affection to it, and devoting it a place in my spiritual home where it truly didn’t belong.

 

I wasn’t out of control.  Truly, I wasn’t.  I might not have been in control of danger that had ingrained itself into what was once pure and good, but I was in control of whether I left it in my life and allowed it to hurt me again.

 

I opened my eyes, and when I looked at the scene before me once more, I saw all that I was holding onto.  I saw the danger in not getting rid of the rug: I understood the consequences of allowing any kind of abuse in my life anymore.

 

But still I wouldn’t let go of that silly unwanted rug, because a part of me craved the comfort that its disfunction possessed.  I knew that it was not the right choice for me, but I held onto it for consolation that I was sure it would eventually bring.

 

I realized that too often, I hold on, we hold on, to things that are to our detriment: relationships and titles and jobs that only bring death and destruction to our lives, all because we are sure that one day, when we are better off, that we will replace them.

 

Rather than being cold, being without, for a moment, we exchange our calling for our comfort, forfeiting the opportunity for new, beautiful, light bringing life to come in and reside in the place where death once lay.

 

I looked at that carpet and saw relationships that once brought joy but then only brought sorrow and pain.  I saw relationships that tore me apart and bruised my feet and stole from the atmosphere of peace that once decorated my home.  I saw the structures and standards that once were put in place for my good turn into dirty and sullen cesspools teeming with disease and death that only subtracted from my life.  All at once, I saw all the things that I had held onto in fear that they wouldn’t be replaced.

 

In my fear of going without, I held onto things that stole from me, robbing me of more than I would have lost if I had just given up that rug in the first place.

 

With that in mind, I stood up defiantly.  I was no longer going to be crushed under the weight of satan’s oppression.  I stood up and walked to the broom closet, determined to win.  I slid thick leather boots over my feet, and, with a broom in one hand and the boldness that comes from heart of the Father in the other, I walked into the dining room.

 

I swept methodically; melodically: as if the worship in my heart sang to the strokes of my broom.  I swept up the glass.  I moved the table next, plucking the shards from the rug’s embrace one by one.  I got down on my knees, inspired, and began to roll.  I heaved the old rug onto my shoulder and tossed the weighty thing in the bin.  It was really gone.  Forever, it was gone.

 

When I walked back inside, there was a moment of sadness.  I saw the barren floor and wondered how I would keep the heat in.  I wondered how I would soften the loud noises of my daily life and what would absorb the sound and the light and the cold of my home now that the rug was gone.  A moment of sadness dwelt within me for just a single, secluded, second in time, but then joy came.

 

 

 

Joy came, because I knew that one day soon, promise would come.

 

 

 

 

I had rid myself of the dirt and weight that kept me restrained at a level of poverty in spirit that I did not belong to, and I did so because the promise of wealth had already been made.

 

I threw out everything in my life that did not glorify God by adding to my spiritual house, and I believed that, in my obedience, it would be replaced with things that did.  I believed then, when I abandoned my comfort and my carpet, and I believe now, with bare floors and a full heart.

 

Friends, come.  Walk in belief.  You are out of control.  But the One who is in control will guide you.  When things remain in your heart that don’t belong, the Holy Spirit will draw your attention to them like shards of glass in a shabby carpet.  You will feel left with no choice sometimes.  You will feel out of control, but you are in control of something.  You are the one with the ability to give it up, and there will be One who comes to take your burden on His shoulder, taking only to give you something greater in return.

 

So, distance yourself from the abusive ways of the enemy and the things of his kingdom that bring about shame, timidity, and despair.  Rid yourself of the things that spur on death.  Walk freely out of abuse and forward into freedom, knowing that whatever you lose in the fight to be liberated will be replaced with more in the walk to eternity.

 

For when things being undone leads you to see the freedom in His undoing, you will then know the beauty in broken glass.