Broken Things
By Shannon Kernahan, Nashville, TN

Boom, bump, boom boom, bump ......................bump, bump, boom boom boom! My belly was a giant kickdrum and the baby inside was a little drummer making his presence known in the waiting room of the doctors office. We had just seen his big screen debut on the ultrasound monitor at our 20 week appointment, but now we had to wait in the the silence and the only sound I heard was the beating of my own heart and the rhythmic drums of my son.  He brought his own song, one I couldn't antcipate.

It was later determined that he had a very bad heart, and would need a complete repair. I drove to my next apointment in complete silence. There was no song that could bring me solace, or comfort. I was angry, I was in love with a child that I couldn't save but what became the final blow was that his diagnosis was far from over.  Down Syndrome, a chromosomal abnormality that manifests itself as a cruel reminder that he would never be normal came back from another test. He was broken and fractured and although I had been to a geneticist whom asked me several times if I wanted to abort my child I was unusually strong and determined to bring him home.

I could barely see the road driving home, my eyes were a flood of tears and the only CD in my player was one that I had been given by a friend of my brother's called Watchfires. I listened to a song called Sweet Uncertain, about surrendering your mind to the authority of God in uncertain times like I was in.  It was that serendipitous moment, where music and soul converge and inspiration comes like water over rocks that I began to feel the warm presence of God and my son began to dance in my womb.

My Dad had passed a few years back from cancer, and towards the end of his life he was walking intimately with God as he prepared him to die with dignity. He was having these dreams but they were all about the same thing, breaking. In his first dream he was very hungry and saw a hard boiled egg, he hesitated because he didn't want to break the egg yet, it was the only way to eat. The second was about a car that he bought, but it was locked in a dealership full of glass windows and the only way in was to break the glass. These dreams continued for days, until one morning I told my Dad about a devotional I had read about living stones. Otherwise ordinary, it wasn't until the stone is broken that light and air can permeate the fissures creating a magnificent fire inside like an opal.

I never thought that this metaphor would again become such an amazing example of how God uses broken things and now, broken people to fulfill his promise to us.

 

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