I Caught Myself Smiling!!!
Today as I was in the temple I caught myself smiling.
You wouldn’t think smiling is a big deal. I didn’t think so either until today when I caught myself smiling. I have considered myself to be a genuinely happy person most of the time and I would often find my face hurting from smiling so big. I was never fond of the deep smile lines on my face and my vain self would think about how smiling is not optimal for my beauty (ridiculous I know).
Smiling was never an issue for me until 4 years ago when Earl passed away. Don’t get me wrong, I have smiled a lot since he passed but I haven’t smiled in the same way and it often feels strained. When we have had pictures taken since his passing I haven’t been sure just what to do with my face. nothing really seemed to feel right. Sometimes my face would quiver as I tried to smile. Sometimes I would just turn my lips up a little kind of like I didn’t even remember how to smile. Smiling isn’t something that I have thought about much until recent years.
Something happened inside of me when Earl died, it’s not that I thought I’d never see him again, I just felt broken for a while, like their were too many teeny tiny pieces to glue me back together without their being some gaping holes. As I thought about this I remembered about the Japanese philosophy of Kintsugi.
Japanese Broken Bowl
The story goes ….
A Japanese legend tells the story of a mighty shogun warrior who broke his favorite tea bowl and sent it away for repairs. When he received it back, the bowl was held together by unsightly metal staples. Although he could still use it, the shogun was disappointed. Still hoping to restore his beloved bowl to its former beauty, he asked a craftsman to find a more elegant solution.
The craftsman wanted to try a new technique, something that would add to the beauty of the bowl as well as repair it. So, he mended every crack in the bowl with a lacquer resin mixed with gold. When the tea bowl was returned to the shogun, there were streaks of gold running through it, telling its story, and—the warrior thought—adding to its value and beauty. This method of repair became known as kintsugi.
Kintsugi, which roughly translates to “golden joinery,” is the Japanese philosophy that the value of an object is not in its beauty, but in its imperfections, and that these imperfections are something to celebrate, not hide.
Maybe I can be like the Japanese bowl. Maybe when God is through with me, I will be more beautiful, more whole and more complete because of the flaws and imperfections. Maybe he is taking my brokenness and mending me with streaks of beautiful gold. Maybe I will continue to smile and it will be more beautiful and genuine than it was before because of my pain and imperfections. Maybe this is the way it was always meant to be.
