No amount of late-night HGTV binges prepared me for what waited behind the red front door with the brass eagle knocker.
The orange shag carpet was bad, but the pink, yellow, black, red and blue paint colors were worse. The previous owner was a hoarder, so there was that. Kudzu crawled against the bathroom floor gaining entry from a nearby broken window and spread to every room. The kitchen floor sunk. A crystal chandelier hanging in the dining room *kind of* redeemed the rest, but let’s be real. This was not the first house vibe I was going for.
“I don’t do renovations,” I told my fiancé.
“You do now,” he replied with a chuckle.
Shiny hardwood floors soon replaced the orange shag carpet and the rainbow of wall colors were traded for the perfect shade of gray. We also took care of the kudzu and kept the chandelier. But the house still had its quirks.
Plaster walls plus Alabama’s shifting soil create the perfect recipe for cracks that spread from one end of a wall to another. And our house had several. Seventeen to be exact. The largest snaked up the living room wall and crept up the ceiling. No matter what we did to cover them up, the cracks came back. My husband called it character, but I called it something to be fixed.
At the time, I was confronting cracks in my own heart and mind. Perhaps why the ones on my walls bothered me so much. Circumstances in my new marriage sent me to my knees more times than I can count in the once sunken kitchen floor. The spiritual safe house I worked my whole life to construct using my good girl persona, ability to speak Christianese, and dole out advice to anyone who came to me with a problem was dismantled.
My friend Kellie came over one day and I told her about the cracks. The ones on the wall and the ones in my heart. She told me about her recent visit to the Western Wall in Israel and how that wall has cracks, too. She said the Jewish people place prayers in those cracks. Prayers for loved ones, prayers for the restoration of Jerusalem, prayers for the Messiah to come.
Stunning.
And sometimes, our circumstances shake our very foundations causing cracks to form where we once felt so strong and sure of ourselves. But what if…
What if instead of attempting to cover our cracks with more of ourselves, we opened ourselves to the words Jesus speaks over us? (John 6:63)
What if when Jesus says He comes and makes his home in us it means that he also resides in our cracks and loves us completely in the midst of them? (John 14:23)
What if we saw our cracks not as a problem to be fixed, but as the door for the Light of the world to shine in our hearts, reveal more of who Jesus wants to be for us in the middle of our crumbling and invites us into deeper intimacy with Him? (Revelation 3:20)
We don’t live in the house with the cracks anymore, but I still think about them. Those cracks taught me a truth I’ll never forget. They showed me how I am invited to be in a relationship with the One who is the only filler of the cracks I carry. He is the one who fills all things with his fullness and holds all things together – including you. (Ephesians 1:23)
“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
– Leonard Cohen
August 13, 2020