Healing Brokenness With a Kindergarten Art Lesson

Why do so many things have to get worse before they get better? Or to get better? Instead of “No pain, no gain,” can’t we live by the mantra John Bytheway jokingly suggests? “No pain? Good!” Life would certainly be easier. When you feel broken, there’s not much you wouldn’t give for easier. For a life that just works. Until you see what God’s doing with all your shredded pieces, and then you wouldn’t trade them for anything. Healing brokenness is an art. And God is extremely good at it.

torn paper collage of butterfly with purple plaid and green floral paper

Let’s go back to kindergarten. This is an art lesson I taught there which, I freely confess, I did not come up with. My sister taught it, and when I took over the class after working with her for three years, I happily carried it on. It was always one of my favorites because it hit so close to home, and in the years since I stopped teaching, it’s only hit closer.

The story begins with a little girl named Sally who skipped home from school one day proudly bearing a pristine piece of special paper she intended to keep that way forever.

The Plan Goes Awry

But along the way, she tripped and ripped her perfect paper. Devastated, she ran home and told her mom the tragic tale between sobs.

Examining the ruined paper, her mom knew she couldn’t restore it to its former glory. Even taped together, it would never be the same.

But she had an idea.

She looked into Sally’s wet eyes and said, “Do you trust me to make it better?”

“Yes,” Sally said, smearing a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. She knew her mom would have a plan.

Her mom took the paper. And ripped it again.

Sally didn’t like this plan. “No! You’re making it worse!”

“Do you trust me, Sally?”

She wasn’t so sure now. But she loved her mom, and she knew her mom loved her. She wouldn’t rip her paper if she didn’t have a good reason. So Sally sniffed and nodded.

Her mom ripped the paper again. And again and again and again. Sally watched with teary eyes, a quivering lip, and the occasional feeble protest when being brave seemed especially hard. But her mom kept ripping.

Finally, the beautiful paper she’d carried out of school with such a light heart was reduced to a pile of ugly, ragged pieces.

If Sally was devastated before, she was desolate now.

Healing Sally’s Brokenness

“Remember, you said you’d trust me,” her mom said, leaving her to stare forlornly at the pile while she got a new piece of paper from the cupboard, a pencil, and some glue.

She knew butterflies were one of Sally’s favorite things, so she drew a big one on the paper, then spread some glue inside, looked at Sally with a twinkle in her eye, and said, “Watch this.”

And one by one, she glued the hopeless pieces onto the page.

butterfly torn paper collage in progress

Sally’s spirits perked up as she watched her mom color the butterfly with all her broken pieces. She thought her paper was nice, but a butterfly was so much better. She never dreamed her very cherished but very square paper could ever be a butterfly.

And she never would have known if she hadn’t tripped.

The Rest of the Story

This is the part where I’d say, “What do you think this teaches us?” and we’d discuss that God works in our lives the same way. Ripping them up, it seems, with the hard things he asks, but working it all for good. Trust him, and he’ll turn what looks hopeless into something it never could have been without some opposition. A picture just as perfect as the paper you started with, but with so much more to offer.

That’s as true now as it was when I taught it. But further experience has added several elements to the story. More characters. Another plot twist or two.

There’s actually another very harrowing chapter between the first rips Sally’s mom makes and forming that butterfly.

So let’s go back.

While Sally’s mom ripped the paper, a knock came at the door, and Marsha Pritchard waltzed in without an invitation.

As though the situation wasn’t bad enough.

Marsha always teased Sally about her clothes, her hair, her freckles. It was her pleasure to inform her where and how she didn’t measure up. She liked any misfortune that happened to Sally, so when she saw Sally’s beautiful paper being mutilated, she asked with an impish glint in her eye, “Ooh, can I rip it, too?”

To Sally’s horror, her mom passed what remained into Marsha’s greedy little hands. “Go ahead. I have a few other things to do.” And she left the room.

Plunging to new depths of despair, Sally frantically called her back. She could believe her mom had a good plan for those ripped pieces. Marsha, she knew, did not.

But Sally’s mom didn’t answer. In fact, when Sally searched the house, she was gone.

Sally Makes a Choice

Sally plodded back to the table and dropped into a chair, watching small pieces of joy float to the growing pile of confetti on the floor. Marsha giggled as she tore off more.

Sally cried, pleading with a mother who must be listening somewhere to come take back control. Then she yelled at the mother she hoped was feeling some uncomfortable pricks from her conscience for abandoning her daughter. Then she watched numbly, unable to plead or yell. And at one point she snatched a piece of the paper from Marsha’s hand and started ripping it herself, bitterly resigned to the inevitable.

This only made Marsha happier and Sally even more miserable.

But throughout the unhappy ordeal, Sally couldn’t ignore what she knew she knew about her mother, whether or not it felt true in the moment.

Her mother loved her.

For all her feeling forsaken, she also knew she still loved her mom.

So Sally kept looking for her. Calling to her. Believing there must be a reason she’d allowed Marsha free reign.

Marsha scoffed at her faith. “Your mom doesn’t care about you or your stupid paper.”

Sometimes Sally believed that. But she noticed she was happier when she didn’t. So she shoved Marsha’s taunts aside and looked for her mom again.

Finally, she appeared and showed Marsha the door. “Thank you, Marsha. You’ve been very helpful. I’ll take it from here.”

Marsha gaped as Sally’s mom steered her out. Helpful? She hadn’t come to help.

Sally didn’t think it was the right choice of words, either.

But watching her butterfly take shape, she understood.

Marsha, who hadn’t known any more than Sally that Sally’s mom could turn those scraps of paper into a butterfly, had unwittingly provided her all the broken pieces she needed to work with.

And the experience had created a Sally who would let her work. A Sally who never knew how much she wanted her mom until she couldn’t find her. A humbled Sally. Who still knew her mom loved her. And who her mom now knew loved her.

Sally couldn’t always decide what happened to the paper. But who had power over the pieces was always her choice.

As she admired her butterfly that night, she was glad she’d held out for her mom.

Healing Brokenness Depends on Your Choice

Use my name in place of Sally’s, and I’ve just summed up my life to date (the butterfly’s not finished, but parts of it are in progress, and wherever it’s not, there is the hope of a butterfly).

If God hasn’t been the one actually tearing things up–leaving prayers unanswered, deferring hope–he’s the one who’s allowed someone else to do it. Sometimes it feels like he steps back and tells Satan, like he did with Job, “You want them? See if you can take them.”

Satan goes to town like mean Marsha, and in the ensuing swirl of anger, numbness, heartbreak, bitterness, loss, we have to decide who we are. Whose we are.

Deciding you’re God’s when he seems to have forsaken you is not easy. When he promises to work all things for good but never seems to–why should I trust such a being?

But I’ve realized he can’t make it good until you make a choice. He can’t make a butterfly if you don’t hand over the pieces.

He will meet you. But you have to meet him.

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God.” To those who choose to see his hand. Who seek for it if they can’t see it. Who want to see it.

It might take some time to find it. Even when you choose him, he doesn’t always put you back together immediately. My life has so often felt like a staring contest with him to see if I can hold out as long as he can. Can I wait for him to make a butterfly as long as he can wait to start gluing on the pieces?

But there will come a day, for me, for you, for this whole messy world, where God appears on the scene of all the havoc Satan’s wreaked and tells him, “That’s enough.”

What else he says depends on who we’ve given power over our brokenness. I hope his conversation with Satan about me goes something like this. “You’ve been very helpful. Now I know who she is. Now you know who she is, much as you hate to admit it. And now she knows who she is. Thanks for helping us all prove she’s mine. There’s no place for you here anymore.”

Because if nothing else has come clear in all the tearing up, this has: I. Want. God.

Healing Brokenness With New Colors

There’s one more element that belongs to this story that I never included in my lesson. I should have. I always let my students use as many colors as they wanted to create their torn paper collages. Many of them drew whole landscapes, and multiple colors were necessary. But I didn’t realize there was an important truth in that.

God doesn’t make new pictures with only your broken pieces.

An all-purple butterfly is lovely. But it’s the added pops of color in the little details that make it rich.

The people whose experiences not only complement your faith but strengthen it.

You have to be careful when two broken things come together that you don’t just mush all the broken pieces into an even bigger pile of broken pieces and turn lots of small misfortunes into one very large one. It’s easy in the company of someone who relates to play on each other’s “Woe is me” instead of pulling each other out of it.

God can’t work two things for good anymore than he can work one unless you both allow him to.

But if you do, he’ll start masterfully gluing some of their broken pieces onto your picture. Using their experiences to enrich your life.

And using yours to enrich theirs.

I’m grateful for the broken pieces that have touched my life and taught me. I look forward to the ones still coming. And I hope mine have something to offer.

If nothing else, they’re waving a blazing sign from the chaos of this wild ride called life for anyone who will read it.

CHOOSE GOD!

I know you have to put an almost impossible amount of faith in him when he appears to leave the room. But he wouldn’t do it if he didn’t have an incredible amount of faith in you. Be there when he comes back. However many pieces your life is in, whoever did the tearing. Choose. Him. You can’t make a butterfly by yourself, and Satan certainly won’t.

God wants to. Let him.

For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
Romans 8:18

I hope this offers some hope for your broken pieces and gives you strength and faith to hand them to God. Please leave a comment and, as always, share this post if it’s touched you.