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Mend is a gentle word.

It takes the preexisting pieces, torn or worn, shredded maybe, and coaxes them back together.

Glue, thread, buttons, patches.

The kind of mending that maintains the reality of the brokenness and tucks the fraying edges into safe places as the whole piece continues to be used in the way intended. Mended, but not repurposed, even the most skilled patches or refastened joints are not seamless or invisible. They are sometimes rough approximations of what it was like before, or simply completely different and patched in obvious ways that draw the eye but are still beautiful. Serviceable.

Mended.

Coaxed back into wholeness.

The items that I mend tend to take on special meaning in my home. There’s the $20 chair whose thrift store cover I’ve patched with thick crocheted lace. There’s the orange pouf that keeps splitting at the seams so I choose bright threads to add more life and personality. There are things I wish I could mend, and some things I don’t mend. I mend the things I care about so we can keep using them.

Mended.

These last couple days in considering this word my refrain has been “Mend me, God.” Because life keeps rolling along and the worn and broken places speak the loudest sometimes.

I want him to take those tattered edges at my fingertips where I can’t try hard enough or say the right thing or hold my pieces together. And I want him to tuck them under with some thread and a patch and say, “Enough. I did that already.”

I want him to mend my attitudes, my selfishness, my thoughts, my blame and blaming, my judging, and my words.

I don’t want him to fix me. That feels like an invasive procedure where I may not survive. And really that isn’t what he does anyway.

I want that loving touch that leaves the pieces better than before, not the same, and not broken, but breathing more of art and life and wholeness than of fear and death and hopelessness.

I want the tenderness of being mended.

I want to be coaxed back into wholeness, too.

Some might say I was never whole, but always broken. I would venture to guess that is true but also not the point, because the intention was wholeness all along and Jesus-mending is the beautiful way back to the whole life. And that has always been the point.

This miraculous mending that will leave us free, and leaves us free, because really it already happened even if we feel like we are in the thick of it.

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So may we yield to the tender mending of Jesus this week. May we grow to bask in the grace of his work. May we live out of our hopes rather than our fears. May we let go of our frayed edges, torn pockets, and missing buttons as we continue to learn to live whole and free as we are in Christ. Reaching forward and out, leaving the shoulds behind, walking after Jesus.

Blessings on your week, #Wholemamas
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Write with us on the word ‘Mend’ and link up or simply read along!

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We are switching to a twice monthly linkup on the first and third Tuesdays of each month. Our next linkup will be on May 17th with the word ‘together’.

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