What a Little Broken Ceramic Dog Can Teach Us About True Friendship
I have a little inexpensive ceramic dog that I have cherished for years. I purchased it at an antique store years ago, and years later, it became the replica of my rescue dog, Wilson.
Last night, I broke it! Not into a few simple pieces, but into so many fragments and tiny slivers. Looking at the aftermath all over my floor, I felt personally crushed. I was certain there was no saving it. I felt the sadness of looking at something I loved and knowing, or at least believing, that it was beyond repair.
Through my tears, I swept up the pieces and threw them into the trash.
In my mind, this piece was over. My girlfriend, Jennifer, and her husband, John, have been houseguests while waiting for their new residence to be finished. They heard my obvious despair from another part of the house. They assured me that the piece might be salvageable, and I assured them that it wasn’t.
But my girlfriend didn’t see it that way. After I went to sleep, Jennifer quietly came downstairs and went through the trash. She pulled out every piece she could find. This single act alone was a true act of love, because my kitchen trash can was filled with leftovers, coffee grounds, and all kinds of other wet and disgusting mess.
When I woke up, my broken dog, along with all of the pieces, was sitting on my counter. Jennifer came down in the early morning hours and immediately started putting the dog back together with gorilla glue. I kept telling her not to worry about it because I did not see any way that this broken dog could be fixed.
This morning, I stood next to her with my cup of coffee and watched her, loving her for the effort, but secretly thinking, there is no way. There are too many pieces. Too much is missing.
But still, she kept going, slowly and painstakingly, putting this little dog’s head back together, piece by piece.
Her hands became sticky with glue as she patiently held broken edges, piecing them together like a puzzle. She never got discouraged. She just kept reassuring me that this job could get done. I secretly believed the opposite.
And slowly, before my very eyes and almost unbelievably, the little broken dog began to take shape.
The cracks I had been so afraid of seeing began to look beautiful. The imperfect edges, getting pieced back together, somehow started looking beautiful, and my heart was feeling hopeful.
It was no longer just evidence that something had broken. It was visual proof that someone loved me enough to sit with the broken pieces and refuse to give up. That someone, overnight, went through my messy trash to fix something I had broken. To see my pain, even though in the big scheme of life, the world had not ended. I was still very sad because they represented many more broken pieces of life.
When Jenn was nearly finished, there was still one piece missing. But at this point, I was willing to settle. What she had repaired was “good enough.” I envisioned putting a flower on the top of the head to cover the missing piece and call it a day. Jennifer was not. She insisted we continue to look in the room where the dog was broken. I kept saying I had swept everything up and vacuumed the floor, and the piece was nowhere to be found.
I had given up, but she kept looking.
And back near the place where the little dog had once been sitting, she found the final piece. I don’t know how this could have happened, but it did. I had swept and scoured every corner of the floor. The final piece has now been glued back into place.
Yes, you can see the cracks. It will never be exactly what it was before. Amazingly, I feel like it is now even better than before.
Because now, the cracks tell a different story.
They will always remind me that sometimes, when we are hurting or feeling despair, even though we cannot imagine how things will ever come back together, they do. We often see only the broken pieces and all that seems to be missing.
Sometimes we need someone else to believe FOR us. We need someone willing to go to our trash and be willing to get their hands messy. Someone willing to sit beside us in the brokenness.
Someone who sees possibility when we can only see damage.
Someone who refuses to give up.
That is what love and friendship can do.
They do not erase the cracks. They do something even more meaningful. They help us discover that the cracks do not have to be the end of the story.
Sometimes what has been broken can also be mended.
Sometimes what has been mended becomes stronger in meaning than it ever was before.
And sometimes, when we do not have enough hope to believe for ourselves, we are blessed with people who will step in and help us mend.
Today, when I look at my little broken dog, I don’t see the flaws; I see something valued and loved enough to be put back together because it meant something to me. This is the meaning of true friendship. Thank you, Jenn! You’re simply the best.
P.S. Did I mention that she also painted my ceiling while I was gone one day? Seriously … what a treasure she is!
