Broken But Beautiful

I refer to my inner critical voice as Frankie. Frankie represents fear and anxiety.

Sam walks over with two handfuls of Ziploc bags ready to collect shells.  There are the shells for his 3rd grade teacher, the piano teacher and of course the “let’s charge 5 cents a piece and get rich quick shells”.  After some skillful negotiating, I convince him to just take one large Ziploc to go on the hunt.  

It’s absolutely beautiful outside; 60 degrees, a colorful blue and orange sky and almost impossibly white sand. It’s like stepping directly into a photoshopped postcard image.  And yet, as my feet hit the sand I find it difficult to stay out of my own head.  Frankie is shouting on a bullhorn making me feel powerless, diminished and irrelevant.  The chatter is dimmed slightly when I overhear my Mom say “oh, just the sound of the beach alone”.  Her mention of the sound reminds me of an article I read that claimed that the beach has been scientifically proven to lower your heart rate and blood pressure, thereby reducing stress.  

I’m sucked back into Frankie’s bubble thinking “see, even at the beach you’re not able to connect because you’re stuck in your own head.  You’re the ONE person that can defy science… but not in a good way”.  I decide I’m going to strong arm it this time and place all my focus on finding shells with Sam.  I’m not about to loose another second with my kids to Frankie.  

Sam is talking a million miles per minute about the shells he’s picking and running up and throwing them into the Ziploc bag.  I notice that several are small broken pieces of shells instead of the perfectly shaped ones littering the beach.  I say, “Sammie, are you sure you want to place the broken ones in there too?”  He confidently responds “yes, they’re BBB Mama…Broken But Beautiful”.  

That does it!  It plants me firmly to the sand between my toes, the sound of the ocean, the shimmering waves that fold forward towards our feet and the bright sun slowly sinking into the horizon.  It’s as if I was floating above the earth, untethered and his words add a weight that grounds me in the moment.  How does an eight year old see it so clearly?  We spend so much time lamenting all the things we are not, all the choices we’ve made that aren’t perfect, and the little time we have left to change them. Kids can sometimes see the beauty in things just as they are right now.

I am just like the shells. I’m not impyling that I’m broken.  That would be more melodramatic than I’m inclined to admit.  However, I have felt broken, imperfect or unattractive.  I’m not talking about a bad hair day or wishing my under eyes were less puffy and my nose a little more straight.  I’m talking about the real me encased in this body; my personality, my feelings, my intelligence, my thoughts, my accomplishments.  

Sam said it perfectly; broken but beautiful.  None of us are perfectly formed or shaped.  We are all works in progress.  Everyone is a beautiful piece in this interconnected world.  That mindset liberates me from the expectations that haunt my thoughts.  It allows me to breath a little deeper knowing that how I am right now in this moment in my life…is beautiful.  Sam helped me to remember that if you take all the little broken shells and place them in a jar for display, you don’t see their brokenness, you see their beauty. 

So the next time you’re feeling irrelevant, undeserving, imperfect or not enough, just remember the BBB shells. You are beautiful just as you are here and now.