The Delicate Center of Life

In the spirit of stating the obvious, life is hard. All around are examples of Broken Things. Broken dreams. Broken families. Broken minds and spirits. Broken promises. Broken hearts.
I struggle with a broken heart. There was a time when I gave my heart to someone who seemed to ask for it; seemed to want it. I gave him my heart freely and discovered my mistake too late. He has moved on, easily it seems to me, and now shares a roof with another woman. It costs me to admit this, because it is not easy for a strong, proud person to admit when they falter, but I have had a much harder time moving on myself, realizing that I was a disposable part of his life.
I share that place with you because I often write about the silver linings in hidden places. Truthfully though, sometimes you face something so completely out of your control that you break inside. You have to seal that break to keep going, but you always know it's there. It aches in bad weather. It makes you turn stations when certain songs play on the radio.
I am not sure how I would move past the Broken Things in my life without being able to focus on something higher than myself. Some call this God. For those who don't, there is a higher Common Good out there. There is humanity. There is "doing the right thing."
This evening, I indulged a yearly tradition at Emory University's Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. It takes place each year in the university's chapel - a commemoration not only of creation, or of the creator, but an acknowledgement that we strive for that common good. The pastor phrased it beautifully - The delicate center of life. We believe that place exists. We pray for it. We sing of it. We share a vision of it with each other in the hopes that it will uplift those who most need it. People who, long ago or recently, sealed off a broken place in their heart to control the damage it did. Everyone who has lived a life has a few tombs hidden in the delicate center of their lives.
Every year, in that gathering space for both the finest of Atlanta's elite and the most ordinary of Atlanta's suburbanites, a safe haven is created. The room is dimmed. Candles are lit. Voices are raised. It is quietly powerful and wonderfully made. I hope the beauty of the evening seeped past all the hard, toughened places in people's hearts and reached the delicate center of their lives. I hope it reached into mine as well, and strengthened some of my own broken places.
My wish for all of you during this holiday season is that you encounter at least a moment that touches the delicate center in your life, and gives you peace, healing and rest.
-Laura