Broken, but still loved
Evidently, I missed National Teddy Bear Week recently.
Yesterday, I pulled this little guy from the box where he’d been packed for the last several months. Our three-year-old granddaughter grabbed him up for a squeeze and said, “Oh, he’s broken.”
I made this bear decades ago, and I’ve been meaning to patch his paw for at least a dozen years. I’d kept him on a high shelf, next to my sewing supplies in our previous house. Maybe the move to a new home was the excuse I needed to finish the job.
I looked at our granddaughter and replied without thinking.
“Yes, he’s broken. But we love him anyway.”
You know where that took me, of course. Loving broken people. Being a broken person somebody still loves. Jesus being broken for us. I’m telling you, the object lessons went through my mind faster than the speed of a toddler’s babble.
I still haven’t patched my bear. Instead, I put him on the shelf with a couple of his favorite authors. (Lewis & Tolkein) When I look at him, I’m reminded about loving the broken. I want to think about that for a while.