Lessons from China: Don’t Let Brokenness Destroy Your Beauty

The Black Dragon Pool in Lijiang, China was broken.

All the tourist guides and travel books I read about Lijiang told me to visit this beautiful site where you could see the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain reflected in a pool of clear blue water. Indeed, the pictures of it online were beautiful. This picture, in particular, made the Black Dragon Pool a must-see on our itinerary:

However, when we arrived in Lijiang and walked from our hotel to the Black Dragon Pool, this is what we saw:

Unfortunately, the pool part of the Black Dragon Pool was empty. All of the water was gone.

The woman at our hotel attributed this to the three-year drought that this part of China has been experiencing. But as we walked around the park we saw other parts of the park had plenty of water.

Then we noticed a bridge in the park that was in desperate need of repair. When we walked across it, many of the floor boards were broken or missing.

And underneath this bridge it appeared that construction crews had built a dam of sorts to hold back the water. The boulders piled beneath the bridge prevented water from reaching the most picturesque part of the park. We presumed that this dam was erected so the bridge could be rebuilt.

And yet no one was working on the broken bridge. No workers were present. The bridge remained broken. The pool remained empty.

The brokenness destroyed the beauty of the Black Dragon Pool.

Often this happens in our lives as well. Something in our life gets broken. Our hearts or our dreams are shattered. Our marriages or our careers fall apart. And it’s easy to think: I’m finished. I’ll never be useful again. No one will ever find me attractive. 

Sometimes we allow the brokenness to steal our beauty. We wallow in our regret or mistakes and remain splintered. We forget that God is in the business of fixing crumbled lives and making them whole.

In Ezekiel 34:16 God tells us:

I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak.

God delights in making broken things whole. He longs to be there to offer us strength when we are weak. He desires to restore our beauty through Jesus’ righteousness. We don’t have to stay broken.

Mark Batterson, in his book Soulprint, writes:

He (God) wants to resurrect your personality that has died at the hands of those who have hurt you. He wants to resurrect dreams that have died of disappointment. He wants to resurrect relationships and give them a fresh start. He wants to give you an abundant life, both quantitative and qualitative. (p. 137-138)

We don’t have to fear brokenness, because God can heal us stronger than we before. He can make our relationships better and our inner beauty shine brighter.

Don’t stay in a broken state. Bring the pieces of your life to God and watch Him put them back together in a new and glorious way.

Next step: Thank God that He is in the business of fixing broken lives. Bring Him all the pieces of your brokenness and watch Him put your heart and life back together.