I’m going to tell you a secret. I cried as we drove through the mountains. No one saw, my face was obscured by the helmet, my eyes covered by sunglasses.  Tears flowed  over my sunburnt cheeks as we cruised carefully by each bend to find a trickle working its way down from the snow caps above. Just God and I knew. I cried because I was small and the mountains were big. I cried because the Aspens rose up to touch the sky, the clouds were within reach. I cried because the beauty overwhelmed me and I was within it.

The road around the mountain curved, rose, twisted. No guard rails blocked the view of the valley far below. Wildflowers persisted among the rocks. The rocks of such magnificent size, shape, color, broken rocks filling my soul with wonder. I cried because I could see what God does with brokenness. I fit into that glorious landscape.

I looked at the valleys, I knew those valleys. Richness could be found there, a pooling of all the resources from on high. The valleys where most choose to live, it is too rugged to stay up high with God. I’ve spent much time in those valleys, missing the beauty, my beauty, forgetting to look up, forgetting that by design, valleys must be rimmed with something higher. The roads are safer, straighter, colors more expected. It is easier to hide ourselves in the valleys, to pretend we are more than, stronger than, that we are whole. It is a mistake to stay too long there.

I turned my eyes back up, around me. My broken life, full of shattered pieces and determined new growth, no longer felt ugly. I too am one of God’s incredible works, the fallen rocks shattered to show new colors, spaces made for new streams. I am small, as tiny as the orange flowers that sneak through patches of grass, planted as surely as I am alive only by God. I am broken, broken like the boulders fallen from salt and sand created monuments to our Creator, boulders that fall to leave a glorious arch that spans a lifetime. Shattered sienna, burnt sienna, turquoise, white bring us to our knees. I am home. My broken life is a thing of beauty. My tears were my sacred offering. I let them fall.