Shattered Glass

I had a strange yet beautiful dream last night. In my dream there was an artist but I couldn't see them. There was a large piece of glass...the edges were perfect, maybe a few blemishes here and there but for the most part intact. The internal part of the glass was completely and perfectly shattered. You know how glass just spiders and cracks every which way. It creates the most abstract patterns. Well the artist took drops of colors, bold and bright colors, and dropped them in various places on the cracks. Then all of a sudden the glass starts to spin...slowly at first then faster and faster but then just as suddenly it stops. The result is this breathtaking panorama of colors. They have mixed and melded into new shades and some have stayed the same shade but they all blend and work in perfect harmony. Now I don't know if this kind of artwork is out there somewhere or if it can even be done....the paint traveled through the cracks in the glass, driven by gravity but the result was so beautiful I can't even begin to express it in words.
So when I woke up at four in the morning after having this awesome dream I kept telling myself I have to remember it, I have to remember it. Then I realized maybe this was a much deeper dream than just about a beautiful piece of art. We are all like plates of glass. We may look perfect on the edges...on the outside, but inside we are all shattered in various patterns and degrees from the experiences we live through. I think we get the beautiful colors when we find the Lord. As we become a new person in Christ he adds the drops of colors to our damage to make us into a new piece of art. Before we were just plain, a broken piece of glass that no one really paid much attention to. Now we are whole again, yeah we still have cracks but we are a brand new piece of art to be loved and cherished. We are beautiful with all the colors of the world and we go out to share out beauty with all those we meet. Sometimes though we forget to share our beauty with the world and then I think our colors begin to fade and run. Sometimes we need to bury ourselves in the comfort of the Word to restore our colors to their original beauty.
I struggle...a lot, especially now that I am so far from my parents, my friends, all that I hold dear and familiar to me but I know when I start looking to my bible for comfort, everything just feels better again. I remember when I first became a christian I couldn't understand how the people around me could spend so much time reading the bible. I tried a few times and just couldn't understand it, I couldn't get into it. It was so different from reading a novel but the older I became and the more I needed something...I started just flipping through the pages one day reading snippets here and there. Then I started reading more, then started reading it more often until it became a routine for me every morning. While Jadynn had her cereal and cartoons I would sit and just browse through my bible. My days got better, our lives felt better. I felt better. Then something happened and I missed a morning but was determined to do it the next morning....then something else happened and I missed again...then I missed several days in a row until eventually I wasn't reading my bible every morning. I know some people will say it's all in your head, if you want to be happy and feel good you can make yourself feel that way but you know what? I know that when I am reading my bible, praying, even trying different churches (since we still haven't found a home church) I just feel better about life, about our situation and about myself.
So just remember we are works of art, just in different stages of completion but never fully finished.