When a bottle is broken beyond repair, useless and unwanted, its shards of glass often make their way down the waterways to the ocean. There, they are tossed and tumbled by the surf and currents, scoured by friction as they bounce off stones and pieces of coral, and etched by a million passing grains of sand that rub against them on their journey of transformation.
With time, the sharp edges are polished smooth, and the glass is burnished with a million tiny scratches that create a softly glowing patina. During the dark of night, with the ebb and flow of the tide, the tiny pieces of polished glass are carried onto the shore, where the receding tide leaves them nestled among the powder white sand.
There they wait for the rising sun to light them with a glow that showcases their true colors.
And a lone person walking on the beach at dawn will see the glowing color and stop and pick up the now beautiful piece of sea glass, amazed by its beauty and grace, taking it home to cherish for its beauty today.
It doesn’t matter what the glass started out as, only what it is today. And it is appreciated for its beauty and color and texture in the here and now.
Our lives are like that.
At one time or another, we’ve all been broken, discarded, no longer valued or appreciated. But that was then, and this is now.
We are the result of all the trials and tribulations of our lives, the scratches and bumps and bruises, battered by our painful experiences, but somehow at the end, made new by them. Not the same. Perhaps not better or prettier or shinier. Not as new and untouched. But different…transformed by the sands of life into the amazing new person that we are today.
We can never go back to where we started. We can’t put the broken pieces back together again in the same shape. We can’t regain that past life. But we can embrace a beautiful joy-filled life that awaits each of us, here and now today, scored by the sands of life into a beautiful new present.
These are the stores of 5 amazing women who have survived the hurts and disappointments of life, the brokenness of their past, the years of being ground down by rejection and pain in their journey of transformation. But at the end, each has emerged more whole, more beautiful, more fulfilled than they ever imagined.
Read their stories. Go on their sometimes painful journey with them. And learn for yourself that a wonderful new future awaits each and every one of us when we are transformed by the friction of our journey from there to here…wherever that may take us.
