This past Saturday, my family was helping to clean our church building. In the foyer was this chair and on the chair is the word broken. This chair had been there for at least a week. I didn’t understand why this chair was sitting in the entrance if it didn’t work. Why didn’t anyone just throw it away? I went over to the chair and started to examine it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this chair. I opened it, I closed it, I sat in it. It is a perfectly functional chair.

As I cleaned the building, lost in my thoughts and pondering on this “broken” chair, I began to connect with it. Lately, I have been feeling “broken”. I am productive, I am doing what I have been asked to do, but I am not doing it in the way I want to. I have been unable to connect with Heaven in the ways that I would like. I have felt broken. In fact, I had labeled myself as broken a few times.

By the time we had finished cleaning the church building, I decided that I was going to take this chair home with me. It needed some TLC and I was determined to take the word broken off the chair. I was going to “heal” the broken chair.

As I was taking the chair with me from the building, all of my children were asking why we were taking a chair with us. Finally, I blurted out, “I need to fix this chair!” Everyone’s eyes got big and they all made a face that seemed to say, ‘okay… whatever you need Mom’. Since then, no one has said a word about the broken chair in our garage.

Thinking about this chair reminded me of a children’s book my friend Celeste showed me written by Max Lucado called You Are Special. In this book there are little puppet people called Wemmicks, carved by a Great Puppet Maker named Eli. The Wemmicks go around and give each other stickers. If you are covered in stars, it means that others like your talents or appearance. If you have gray dots on you, it means that there is something wrong with you. One day, this puppet named Punchinello, meets another puppet named Lucia, who has no stars and no dots because they don’t seem to stick to her. She is so happy. He wants to be like her. She tells him to go meet the Puppet Maker.

When Punchinello goes to meet the Great Puppet Maker, he learns that the stars and dots don’t hold any meaning to the Eli. Eli loves them all just how they are. The Puppet Maker invites Punchinello to come visit Him often so that eventually the stickers won’t stick to him either as they hold no real value.

I love this story. Eli, the Puppet Maker is God. Lucia is a Wemmick (or person) that learns and understands that in daily personal connection with God is how we become whole. She is able to be a light to others and direct them to Him. She is able to live among the other puppets whose goals are to have as many stars as possible, which they think makes them special which then brings them happiness. But she learned that true joy comes from being exactly who God made her to be and by being different, she can share that joy with all those around her.

This puppet had gone from feeling like she wasn’t enough due to the sticker system that the Wemmicks had created to understanding that she was unique and beautiful just the way her Creator had made her. She leaned in and embraced that understanding and then began to share it with those around her.

I love this story because I can absolutely relate to it. I didn’t love myself until I began to embrace and love myself as I was and not the idea of what the world wanted me to be. It is an impossible idea to chase and seems to be ever changing in this world we live in. I can just imagine the laughter that Satan enjoys in watching us run around chasing these ideas that he knows are impossible to obtain and will never truly bring us joy. That is his purpose after all, to keep us from going to meet and spend time with God and learning to love ourselves the way that He loves us.

On Sunday, two of my favorite people gave talks in church. The first talk was about obedience. He mentioned the words ‘Reluctant Obedience’ and so many thoughts ran through my head! I have had so many instances of reluctant obedience. In fact, there was a situation recently when I was reluctant to act and I let an entire month pass by without acting. I worried that by the time I had actually acted, it had been too late. I still worry that is the case. Of course, I understand that God knows everything and there is another plan for when I (imperfect human) don’t act on His inspiration.

The second talk was about so many things I needed to hear. More than anything, my friend shared his own personal struggle. This struggle was searching for a job and it lasted about a year and a half. As he was going through it, he mentioned how Heaven felt a little silent when he wanted to hear from Heaven the most. He talked about 8-9 months of going through a process that he felt clear inspiration to do and, in the end, the situation didn’t work out. He felt like the last 8-9 months had been for nothing and was confused and a little angry.

Over the next 8 months, he worked on different but similar project and eventually a job offer came of it. It wasn’t something that he was looking for or even wanted, yet the job wanted him. When they talked more, he realized that this was what he spent the last 18 months preparing for. He could not have gotten this new position if he had not spent all of that time working on these challenging projects that had stretched him in different ways to learn. He now has a wonderful job that seems like it was made for him.

During those 18 months, he kept doing what he was supposed to be doing and stayed obedient. He endured through the challenge and even though he was frustrated and angry, he made it through and saw the great blessing that God had in store for him.

Some of our blessings just come seemingly out of of nowhere whether we deserve it or not and some of our blessings require that we put forth great effort to obtain them. Satan wants to distract and discourage us from obtaining those blessings. He is really good at what he does and it is so easy to get distracted in this world that we live in.

So, why the broken chair? I keep saying that I feel a little broken. I don’t really know how to describe this feeling. I do however know, that piece by tiny piece, I am feeling restored. I know that it isn’t going to be a fast restoration. It is going to take some time and patience with myself and in this process.

My friend’s talk really connected with me and I could look back at my own times of struggle when Heaven felt a little silent and then a long time later, after enduring and being obedient, the beautiful blessing was shown and I could understand all of the waiting, trying, failing, and hurting. It was all a time to grow and stretch, a time to level up.

My friend’s, don’t give up in your time of waiting. Be active. Be obedient. Pray harder. Read your scriptures. Heaven isn’t really silent. I know the angels are still here in our home. There are just times when we are meant to be tested on all that we have learned and experienced to see if we will in fact stay obedient and faithful. It is so hard, but I promise it will be worth it.

If I hadn’t written all of these previous posts, I know I would be struggling even harder. I have Satan whispering in my ear all day long to tempt me to turn back and keep me from moving forward. I will not give in to him!

I took my ‘broken’ chair and I scrubbed at the permanent marker until my chair now says ‘OK’.

And so it is, as with my chair, I am going to be Ok.