{How to Mend the Little Things}

It's funny how we become accustomed to nagging little things in our lives. Take, for instance, this lamp.

See that trim? Hanging right off. For a very. long. time. I really have no idea how long I lived with it. Just sort of hanging there.

Dejected. Sloppy. Incomplete. Ignored.

It became so normal that I didn't even think about fixing it. Didn't even acknowledge that I could have it whipped back into shape in a mere five minutes.

That is, until our recent move. When the surroundings were different, I saw that lamp in a new light. (Ha.) I said to myself, "A glue gun and two minutes will have that baby restored. I can have my lamp back!"

So I grabbed the glue gun (it did help that I had it out for another project anyway), applied a ribbon of glue to the trim, and pressed it back into place.

Voila! That's all it took. And my lamp looks happy and whole once again. After far too long.

I wonder if I've let other imperfections slip into my life without giving them a second thought. They've become routine. A part of the normal backdrop.

Attitudes. Words. Habits. Thoughts.

And it doesn't occur to me to do one single thing about it.

With the lamp it took a change of scenery. Perhaps it's the same with the heart? A carved out space of quiet to move away from the normal and to really observe what's going on. To get out the glue gun and mend a thing or two.

Better yet, to hand the brokenness over to my own Creator. To lay it all bare and pray the prayer that David uttered long ago.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

The wonderful thing about handing my hurts and imperfections over to the Lord is that He doesn't just repair it. He makes it new.

New ribbon ensconced in light. Fashioned by His own hands. Now that I can definitely live with.



Beautiful Things by Gungor
Psalm 51:10