Lord,

How malleable I allowed myself to be when I knew
I had been broken.
When I couldn’t put the pieces of myself back together,
I cried out to You,
submitted to Your shaping influence
and, in time, felt myself whole.

How swiftly I allowed that sense of wholeness to calcify
into an impenetrable self-sufficiency.

Now I’m broken in an entirely different way.
Hardened beyond usefulness.
Unfit for purpose.
Daily, I trade
discomfort for distraction,
trust for cynicism,
community for autonomy,
build brittle walls around my vulnerabilities
and call it
protection.

This is not the way I want to be.

I want to be as soft as clay
in the potter’s hand,
as yielding as soil
under the gardener’s palm,
as pliable as a reed
in the weaver’s fingers.

I do not desire to be broken, but,
Lord, how I long to be bent
into a being that resembles
You.