“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” 2 Corinthians 4:7

Recently I learned of a Japanese art called Kintsugi. Kintsugi is the art of putting broken pieces of pottery back together with gold, silver, or platinum. This technique is based on the idea that by embracing flaws and imperfections, we can create a stronger, more beautiful piece of art.

In Kintsugi, the cracks of the broken pieces are not covered up to disguise them. Instead, they are highlighted by filling them with golden lacquer that transforms what was broken into something even more beautiful than when it was whole.

What the Kintsugi artists are doing with their broken pots is a beautiful picture of what God does with our lives, and it has something important to teach us.

For most of my life, I have been a perfectionist. When looking at my flaws, weaknesses, and mistakes, I have tended to feel shame and to be hard on myself. I have come to realize that at it’s root, this comes from a lack of accepting myself as I am. And God has been working to uproot this.

In this process, He has been teaching me a different way. Similar to what the Kintsugi artists do with their pots, I am learning to accept myself as I am with all my flaws and broken pieces, and it is powerful. Here I want to share with you about what I am learning as God is mending me together with gold.

The Reality of Our Flawed Humanity

Each one of us has been created by God with our own unique mix of strengths, talents, abilities, personality traits, and emotional makeup.  On the flip side, every one of us has flaws, weaknesses, quirks, and parts that we would rather others do not see. We all make mistakes and mess up, and we all have broken pieces inside of us because of the ways that we have been hurt in life. The truth is, each of us is a mixed bag.

Our human tendency is to ignore or even deny the parts of ourselves that are hard for us to look at. In many cases, this is because we are secretly burdened by a quiet sense of self-loathing. But what we don’t realize is that all of this actually causes us and our relationships more harm, and it blocks the flow of God’s love into our lives.

What is needed is for us to see ourselves honestly and embrace the truth of our total selves. This is part of mature spirituality, and it makes room for God’s transforming grace to flow into our lives. But how do we do this?

God’s Unconditional Love Is the Foundation

Accepting ourselves is extremely difficult to do if we have not experienced the true nature of God’s unconditional love.

God sent His Son Jesus Christ to show us once and for all what He is like. Through Jesus, we can experience the unconditional love of the Father. You can read more about that here.

One of my favorite descriptions of God’s nature is found in Psalm 103:8-14:

The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
    slow to anger, abounding in love.
 He will not always accuse,
   nor will he harbor his anger forever;
he does not treat us as our sins deserve
 or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
 so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
 so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

As a father has compassion on his children,
 so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.

The above passage is a picture of how God relates to us as a kind and compassionate Father. God is fully aware of our human frailty. He knows every crack and broken piece inside of those He has made, and He doesn’t want us to hide anything from Him.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

1 John 1:7

When we experience God as infinitely loving and merciful as the Bible portrays Him to be, we can receive the courage to freely admit and accept the reality of our own flaws, weaknesses, and failures. As we embrace these broken pieces in the light of God’s love, we allow what was once shameful to us to be transformed as it is mended by the gold of His mercy and grace.

As we receive God’s unconditional love and acceptance towards us in this way, we are able to extend the same grace those around us. All of this has a huge impact on our relationships with others.

Love Your Neighbor As Yourself

Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:37-40

A couple of decades ago, I was walking down an African street with a counselor from America who had come to minister to the missionaries on our base.  She pointed out to me something about the above verses that I had never considered before: that we can’t truly learn to love our neighbor until we have learned to love ourselves. I never forgot these words.

To a Christian the words “loving yourself” might sound like selfishness. In reality, what it means is to internalize the love of God for you in such a way that you treat yourself with the same unconditional love and acceptance that God gave us through Jesus.

We love because He first loved us

1 John 4:19

Practically speaking, this means that you are kind, understanding, and compassionate when faced with your weaknesses and limitations. You freely owe up to your mistakes and work to correct them, but you don’t beat yourself up over them. You give yourself permission to not be perfect and you don’t have to know everything. You allow yourself to need other people, and you allow others to meet those needs. A person who treats themself this way will likely treat others the same.

On the other hand, if you are always focusing on what is wrong with you and you don’t have much patience for your own weaknesses or failures, you are likely to behave in a simliar way towards others. The inner tension and frustration that you carry from non-acceptance of yourself will undoubtedly spill over into your relationships somehow.

As we see how deeply loved we are by God– in our depths, complexity, totality and sinfulness, we dare to allow God more complete access to the dark parts of our soul that most need transformation.

David Benner, from The Gift of Being Yourself

My Story

I’m going to be vulnerable in what I share here, but I do this in the hope that it will help some of you reading this today.

One of the most difficult things that I have had to face in my life has been the disappointment of finding myself still unmarried and without a family of my own in mid-life. This is something that I truly never expected, especially after decades of putting my relationship with the Lord first.

In the past several years, I have been through two committed relationships that didn’t work out. It has been very painful to go through these heartbreaks after opening myself up to love, especially when I have waited so many years for a husband. Loving someone else is the most vulnerable thing I have ever done.

BUT…

What I thought would have left me irreparably broken has actually turned out to be an occasion for greater healing and wholeness in my life.

You see, the Lord has used this whole difficult experience to shine His light on the very issue that I am talking about right here. This light has uncovered places in my soul where I have not received God’s unconditional love and acceptance for me. This has caused me to not truly love and accept myself as I am, and this has affected every area of my life.

These days, God is helping me to take a different approach. I am learning to look honestly at myself without feeling shame over my deficiencies, and I am learning to embrace the totality of who I am. This means acknowledging all the wonderful qualities and strengths that I have, as well as my flaws and weakness, and accepting all of it. I am beginning to internalize the biblical truth that I am “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13-14).

I am discovering that God’s love gives me freedom to be myself and that it’s okay to make mistakes and not be perfect. I am learning to live in the unconditional love of God. And truthfully, I am finding this approach to life so much more restful and enjoyable.

And you know what else? I believe that my next relationship experience will be so much better, because I will be more fully resting in who I am and free to love another in the way that I have learned to love myself, with the unconditional love of the Father.

I am definitely NOT saying that we should be comfortable in our sin or complacent about the things in us that need to change. What I AM saying is that when we approach our desire for personal growth and holiness from a posture of self-acceptance, it makes it so much easier to allow God in to do His Kintsugi-like work in us.

The reality is that God can do so much more with our broken pieces when we accept them than when we reject them. He is able to mend them together with gold, making us stronger and more beautiful than ever before.

Put it into Practice

After reading this post today, what resonates with you? Reflect on that part and bring it before God in prayer. Psalm 139 is a great passage to meditate on. Here is another exercise you can do if you need some help.

Did you enjoy this post? I think you will also enjoy the post: Becoming the Beloved.

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