Where the Light Shines Through

Some time ago, I listened to an interview with Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen. She spoke about a twenty-four-year-old young man who had to have one of his legs amputated to stop the spread of bone cancer. He had become angry and bitter.

Eventually, Dr. Ramen was able to help him come to grips with his loss. And as he recovered, she encouraged him to reach out and help others – to turn from an inward, self-focused grief, to an outward focus. So the young man began to visit others with physical disabilities, to share his own story of recovery and hope. 

One day he visited a young woman who had just been operated on for an aggressive type of breast cancer. She was suffering from deep depression. Her room was silent, aside from the radio playing by her bed. She wasn’t really responding, and he seemed unable to get through to her. Desperate to make a connection, he took off his artificial leg and began dancing around the room on his one good leg to the rhythm of the radio. Sure enough, the woman began laughing, and said, “Okay, if you can dance, I can sing.” And she did. 

About a year after the young man’s turnaround, he sat down with Dr. Remen to wrap up his therapy. At one point, they looked over some of the artwork he had done early on, and they discussed how his views of life had changed. One picture expressed it beautifully. When he had been asked to draw a picture of his body, he had at first drawn a vase with an ugly, jagged crack running down the middle. This crack represented all the anger, bitterness, and disgust that had filled his heart after he lost his leg. He had seen himself as broken, and therefore, useless. 

However, as the young man now looked at this picture, he knew it no longer represented how he felt. He took out a yellow crayon and drew vibrant yellow streamers pouring from the crack in the vase. Then he explained to the doctor, “You see, where it is broken, this is where the light shines through.” 

All of this makes me think about the brokenness in my own life, and in yours. And I wonder in what ways we are allowing the light to shine through. 

Let us pray: God of Grace, we have all experienced loss. Some of us today are carrying heavy burdens. We all have some measure of brokenness within us. We pray for healing. We pray for grace. But please don’t stop there, O God. May your light shine in us, and through us. Amen.