Shattered Plans – Part 1 — Morning Devotions

By Chris WittsWednesday 6 Oct 2021Morning Devotions with Chris WittsDevotionsReading Time: 3 minutes

Have you dropped a glass and watched it shatter and scatter across the floor? There was nothing you could do but sweep it up and throw it away. You might remind yourself not to go barefoot any time soon since splinters of glass sometimes linger.

Can you relate this scenario to a broken heart? It may have felt like it shattered into a million pieces. You probably felt it would never mend. The hurt was just too deep; too painful. They say that ‘time heals all wounds’, but at the moment of the shattering, it is impossible to believe. You look for brighter days, but your view is through a soul that sees only grey.

You are numb. Painful events generate broken hearts: a relationship gone wrong, the death of a loved one, a child gone astray, or perhaps someone you love has moved away. In any event, you do not feel like you can go another moment, let alone another day. You may ask yourself, “Am I depressed, oppressed, or just one big mess? What’s wrong with me ?”

When things go pear shaped

Sometimes, our plans do not go as we had hoped. In fact they are shattered. They’re obliterated in front of our very eyes. You were almost breathless when your dismissal finally sunk in. In your shock, you could have been pushed over with a feather. Certainly plans are made to be adjusted, but this one blew up in your face.

You were devastated. You had positioned your career for this one opportunity, and it failed to materialise. Even now, your emotions go up and down between bewilderment and anger toward God, and your future feels dark and disjointed. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Just for a moment, imagine that you had a treasured vase. Maybe even a family memento. Something that had enormous sentimental value to you, and could not be replaced. And then, one day, accidentally, you knock it off the shelf. To your horror, it shatters in front of you, its beautiful pieces flying off in a million different directions. And as you desperately pick them up, you realise that you simply cannot put it back together the way it was.

Yet, in the process of trying to restore your vase, you also realise something else. That you have made something new. And while the vase that once was will never be again, you have made something that is perhaps even more beautiful!

Things about life we can learn

Well life is like that. We are, in many ways, like a vase, that when suffering a small break, probably can be restored to our original qualities. However, when our lives are shattered, what remains are only the pieces. But what these pieces represent is also the opportunity to create anew. Because had the vase not been shattered, we would have never considered what else is possible. We would have never been forced to rebuild, and we would have never had to grow. I think there are five things we can learn:

1. Life is not perfect

As much as you may try to make life fit into a perfect bubble, it will not. Because no amount of planning, preparing, or insurance can ever prevent things that are just not in your control. And while you may try desperately to uphold an image—working long hours for the promotion at work, saving up for the luxury car, or finding the perfect mate—the reality is that these things can all be gone in a heartbeat.

And as much as you’d like to think the world should fit your expectations, that people should behave as you think they should, that things should happen as you think they should, life is not like that. It is imperfect. It is good and bad. Sometimes really good and really bad at the same time. And the sooner you can accept the world as it is, the sooner you can let go of the way you think it should be.

(To be continued in Shattered Plans – Part 2)