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Have you ever made a mosaic?  It is a piece of art you make out of broken tile. Here is an example by an awesome lady named Lily Yeh…

It is interesting how mosaics are made, especially those made by Lily Yeh.  Lily gathers old, thrown away tile that most people might consider trash.  She then uses a hammer to break the tile into smaller, jagged pieces.  Then based on a sketch design, Lily proceeds to arrange the pieces together along with the adhesiveness of some sort of sand/cement mixture and ends up creating a grand design and a special piece of art.

As you can see in the picture up above, such a beautiful and inspiring piece of art was made from old, broken tiles and dirt.  Amazing.

Just like a mosaic is made, we have the choice in adverse circumstances to make our own emotional mosaic out of the broken pieces of our inner being.  The word, “choice,” is crucial here because we first must choose how to deal with adversity.  There are lots of directions we can go, but one general direction we can aim for is to make efforts to mend and heal.  So, just like the gathering of tile from the trash, we must gather the broken and torn down pieces of ourselves.  We must accept that there is the possibility of making beauty from the pain.

Next, we must break down a lot of the tile into smaller pieces.  Sometimes our brokenness needs to be deconstructed and understood on a deeper level.  Then we start fitting the pieces together as a way to start understanding what we can do and where we can go to create something positive and even beautiful.

This process of putting the pieces together is not always clean, clear, or easy to do.  The cement and sand we use to put the pieces in their place is dirty and gritty.  At times it covers the beautiful colors of our tile, making it difficult to predict how everything will come together.  There may be times where we do not know exactly where to place the pieces, so we just have to trust that whatever we choose will take us somewhere and contribute to further growth.  There might be times where we have reached a point of clarity and completed a part of the mosaic, but then enter a new section of the mosaic where we meet again with confusion and difficulty.

At some point we will have used up all our tile, wash off the grit from the pieces, step back, and look at where we have come from and what we have accomplished.  It is in this moment where we finally can see the beauty from the pain.  Each individual tile represents a struggle, a hurt, a piece of our broken selves.  But then we see how it all comes together to make a greater part of who we are.  Something colorful and intricate and beautiful.  We have made art.

We go from this…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

to this…

 

Are you willing to do this?  What are your broken pieces of tile and how might you be able to deconstruct and put them together to make something beautiful? 

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