WHATEVER

Things My Father Taught Me
By Mary Regina Morrell 

Broken hands are a sure path to God  

"God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being and let God be God in you." Meister Eckhart

After my parents died and it came time to pack up all of their possessions I found a small statue of Mary tucked away in the dark corner of a bedroom shelf - a memory from my youth. I had named her Our Lady of the Broken Hands.

She had not come through the years unscathed. Her hands, pressed together in prayer, were missing the fingers, and her torso, once broken completely in half, had been glued together in my father's singular "good enough" approach to things - God rest his beautiful soul.

And as strange as it may seem to those who value the perfect, Our Lady of the Broken Hands sits on my desk at work next to a second statue of Mary with a similar affliction. She has no hands. This small, delicately carved wooden statue was damaged in a move from one office to another. When I unwrapped her after arriving in this new place and saw that her hands were broken I could not help but stop to reflect on the two statues that now stood side by side in their imperfection.

They have become for me a constant reminder of a painful and wonderful lesson - we, like they, are beautiful in our brokenness.

And broken we are, whether or not we are willing to admit it. Through the eyes of our brokenness we see the world not as it is but as we are, so it should not be hard to understand why a single experience shared by many will be perceived in many different ways.

We see what we are - but that is not always a bad thing.

When we share our perceptions and understandings with others, it may offer each of us new ways of seeing and being that help us to grow in spite of our broken, imperfect state.

My broken statues of Mary remind me that my own imperfections are the vehicles for God's work in me, and should any of us believe we lack imperfection we would possess an arrogance that would surely keep us separated from God.

Our Lady of the Broken Hands keeps me mindful also that with patience, courage, devotion and passion we can move beyond the limitations of our imperfections to fulfill all the potential of that which God sees as a masterpiece of God's own hands - us.

We only have to read the Psalm's of David, the very imperfect king who sang to God, "Lord, you have searched me, you know me; you know when I sit and stand; you understand my thoughts from afar, my travels and my rest you mark; with all my ways you are familiar . . .You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb. I praise you, so wonderfully you made me; wonderful are your works! My very self you knew; my bones were not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, fashioned as in the depths of the earth. Your eyes foresaw my actions; in your book all are written down; my days were shaped, before one came to be."

There is a reason for our imperfection. It keeps us close to God and allows God room to work in us.

But since I am always in need of reminding, I will be happy to make room next to Our Lady of the Broken Hands for any less-than-perfect statue that needs a home!