“Two deaths in two days.” I said, “And it just feels like love is ripping.”

She didn’t hesitate in her no-nonsense response: “Well, love has been ripping since the curtain was torn, right? Sometimes you gotta wade on in and muck the shit, Heather. I’m praying blessings.”

And there she stood with one hand on my head and the other on her Starbucks. Holiness mixed with coffee and kinship and cuss words as she ushered Jesus in like a welcomed guest we’d been waiting on for days.

She blessed the ugly. She blessed the tangled. She blessed the confusion. The doubt. The questioning.

She blessed the cracking places.

Said it out loud: “Bless the Brokenness of the Cracks.”

The blessing of cracks—I thought about her words all the way home. And then it hit me. Those tiniest, faintest, littlest cracks—some not even visible to the human eye— still let a bit of light through.

Who says that breaking lets in the darkness? The cracks of light are just enough to shine.

And so I cracked a little more. And I felt something give. I pressed hard, and harder still, into the thin places—the cracks that force the darkness out and let the Light shine in.

Who says that the ripping doesn’t allow us to be woven back together in a more meaningful, majestic tapestry?

A stronger, magically mended, beautifully blended, once-torn, now-adorned tapestry of life.

So…to all of you who may read this……who may be ripping and breaking and cracking and hurting too……

Wade on in.
Break wide open.
Crack deep.
Rip with the love.

Blessings to you, too, as we muck in the knee-deep mess of it all. Because we are better together. And we’ll make it to other side—a dirtied-cleaned, ripped-up-repaired, light-cracked-open, broken Holiness.

And shining just the same.

About Heather
Heather Cody loves Jesus, people, and especially Bob Dylan. She’s a nurse who lives in Georgia with her husband, two sons, and a voraciously hungry dog, Harry.