The Inception of a Name
A friend recently asked me what I would title the book I’m currently writing. I told him I had struggled with creating a title, because every title I thought of was copyrighted. Then it occurred to me that I already had the title long before I started the book. It is a title I have been hesitant to use, and I have wondered if it fits.
In 2018, after a long season of silence, I felt I was ready to rebuild my website and start writing again. At the time, I had been journaling about grief, brokenness, and heartache when I came across an online article about Kintsugi. This is the Japanese art of repairing broken China by adding gold or silver dust to the resin used to glue the broken China back together. I thought it was a beautiful metaphor for what a broken heart healed by God might look like. Since then, I’ve encountered other writers who have used Kintsugi as a metaphor for spiritual and emotional brokenness. In fact, a new friend, Nancy Manassero used a picture of this art as the cover for her recent book, Heartmending. But at the time, I had never heard of the art, and I had not yet come across another writer using this as a metaphor.
Since I was writing about the healing God was doing in my heart and how he was changing and mending my heart, I decided to use a picture of this finished process as the header and logo for my new blog. After searching for a domain name to describe this metaphor, I finally decided on More Than Mended for my blog. However, despite my longing to write, it was three more years before I finally got my website back up. By that time, I realized I should be blogging under my name. Still, I kept the domain name More Than Mended and created a category under that name where I could blog about grief and broken relationships.
Whispers from a Wounded Soul
A few months ago, I dubiously concluded that this might be the name for my book. I came to this name reluctantly because although it’s something I long to be, I rarely feel I’ve come close to achieving it. I look at the beautiful art of Kintsugi and I want that to be the picture of my heart. But so often I still feel broken. I still struggle with trauma triggers, and I still feel unsure if not unsafe around men. I still make choices guided by fear and insecurity. And I still tend to minimize harm.
I often think, “I’m not more than mended, I’m not even mended, I’m still broken.” In my brokenness, guilt, shame, and a sense of unworthiness plague me. My heart silently whispers, “This wasn’t that bad, others have had it much worse. You are making too much of this. Your story is too much. Besides, this was your fault.” While it has been an important part of my healing to recognize how much I minimized the harm done to me, I still struggle with this tendency to minimize my hurt. I often feel unworthy of care, and it is hard to offer myself the tenderness and care I long for.
When I finally offer myself grace, then I hear the voice of the accuser whisper, “You don’t deserve grace because you haven’t offered grace. When you minimized your trauma, you also minimized the trauma and pain suffered by your children. It would have helped if you had done more to shield them from trauma. It would have helped if you had done more to help them grieve and heal before they all left home. Their pain is your fault.”
As I think about how different my past looks to me now, I also hear, “You should have recognized the dangerous mental state of your husband. You might have been able to get him some help.” As I write, I also hear, “You shouldn’t talk about such things, what will others think of you if you talk, you’re speaking ill of the dead, you should focus more on the things you have done.” If I don’t stop the whispers, they get louder until they silence me. And they have kept me silent for more than twenty years.
More Than Mended
But despite the whispers, I know I can’t move forward without accepting God’s grace for me and my own offering of grace to myself. I remind myself that writing is part of that grace, and writing is part of my healing. So, although I feel certain I will finish the book, I am not sure I will publish it. This book is the story of my past told in the compilation of notes and journal entries I made as I worked with my counselor to understand and process the trauma of domestic abuse. It is my own story of healing, and it is raw and vulnerable. And as I work my way back through the story and the process of counseling, I continue to heal.
And so, whether I publish it or not, I will name this story More Than Mended. And while I may never fully feel mended, the name reminds me that I am more than broken. It reminds me that I am redeemed. And it is here in the words that I pour out onto the page that I offer myself grace to silence the whispers of guilt and shame.
I write in my book, both to myself and to the wounded soul who may also struggle with guilt and shame, “To offer myself grace isn’t playing God and offering what only He can give. In fact, it is just the opposite, to do less is to declare myself more righteous and just than God. To carry my guilt or to punish myself, is to deny God’s grace and strive to make my atonement. But I cannot give more grace than God already gives me, and neither can you. I cannot love myself more than He loves me, and neither can you. You are His beloved child, and He is not looking at you with eyes full of stern judgment. His eyes are full of compassion, grace, and love, and His arms are wide open to those who weep and mourn.
Will I be beautifully whole when I finish this book? Probably not. There will always be parts of me that are broken, not because of the harm that has been done to me, but simply because I’m a fallen and sinful human in a fallen and sinful world. I will still make mistakes and sin against God and others irrelevant of my past wounding. And I will continue to make choices that unconsciously shield my heart despite all the hard work I have done in counseling. But when I look at the art of Kintsugi, I think of the scars that Jesus still bears on his resurrected body as a beautiful reminder of the suffering He endured for me…and for you. I believe that in heaven our scars may also resemble something beautiful, like these gold and silver-filled cracks and there at last we will all truly be more than mended.