Take a look in the mirror and describe to me who you are using only one word. I am _______. There are hundreds of words from which you could choose: smart, creative, talented, blessed, happy, joyful, kind, loving, accepted, lost, hurting, searching, lonely, sad, tired, worthless, angry, depressed. The list is endless. I could use a variety of words to describe myself, but when I look in the mirror, I see the word broken. I am broken.
In my mom’s china hutch sat a black serving bowl with scalloped edges. The bowl had belonged to my grandmother, and it held a special meaning for my mom. My grandmother passed away when I was turning 8 years old. I have no memories of her. She had become a sickly woman before I was born, and even though my brother, sister, and I went to visit her and my grandfather every weekend, we never saw her. We either played on the porch stairs or were given a quarter to go to the little store next door to get a popsicle to eat while we waited to go back to our own home. I have several pictures of my grandmother, but the only time I actually remember seeing her in person was at our house for her and my grandfather’s 50th wedding anniversary party.
When my mom was in her late 80’s, the unthinkable happened. The glass shelf above the one holding the black bowl fell down and shattered it into several pieces. My husband and I lived a couple of blocks away from my parents, and I stopped in to check on them several times a week. When I saw the broken bowl in the hutch, I asked what had happened. My mom couldn’t bear the thought of throwing out the bowl, so she glued it back together as best as she could, but you could see every single crack in the bowl. Since I had no real connection to the bowl, I suggested that she throw it away, but she said no; she was keeping it as is. When my mom saw the broken bowl, she only saw its grace and beauty. When I saw the bowl, I only saw its brokenness. To mom, the bowl held great value; to me, it was worthless. My mom passed away in 2014 at the age of 88. When my dad moved in to live with my sister a year later, the black bowl went with him.
Earlier this year (2026), the bowl came up in a telephone conversation I was having with my sister. She told me that she had re-glued the bowl in an effort to make the bowl look better and asked me if I wanted it. I told her that she should just throw the bowl away, but she said no. A couple of days later, I called my sister and asked what she thought about the idea of having pieces of the bowl turned into jewelry like her daughters had done with one of her broken china plates. She liked the idea, so we had several different pieces of jewelry, key chains, charms, and ornaments made from a very special dish that had belonged to their great-great-grandmother, to pass down to the grandchildren. I have an ornament to hang on my Christmas tree every year now that is graceful and beautiful, created from something that had great meaning and value to my mom, whom I will cherish forever.
The person who designed and created my grandmother’s black bowl did so with a purpose in mind. When the shelf fell on it, that purpose no longer existed, but when the bowl’s pieces were placed into the hands of a master craftsman, it was transformed into beautiful artwork that now serves several purposes. You might be thinking you no longer have purpose now that the shelf of life came crashing down on you, but your shattered pieces are already in the hands of God, the Master Craftsman. He doesn’t need you to fix yourself — He’s already turning what’s broken into something beautiful in His own time.
No matter what word you use to describe yourself, the Bible says in Isaiah 43:18, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing.”
2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come.”
John 1:3, “Through Him all things were made.”
2 Corinthians 3:18, “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
Gram