Introduction

As long as I can remember, I've had a child-like fascination with 2 things...seashells and pottery. I can walk for hours on the beach watching the waves and picking up shells. I love finding ones that no one else wants...the broken ones that expose the inside, intricate parts of the shell. I can leave the beach with more shells than any toddler there.
And pottery...I love beautiful pottery, especially "Rebecca's pitchers" -something about the handle. And to watch someone work at a potter's wheel is a treat for me...love that scene from the movie "Ghosts"! Never had the courage to try it myself...maybe one day. There's a hymn I grew up singing in church..."Have Thine Own Way, Lord" which uses the analogy of us as clay and God as the potter. Beautiful thought to think of Him molding us...painful sometimes though. I have a decorative ball on a shelf in my kitchen fashioned from pieces of broken pottery and china excavated from an archeological dig in Charleston, SC. I think it is beautiful in its brokenness and love history of it...

Which brings me to the title of my blog..."Broken, yet Beautiful". I've come to see a lot of myself in seashells and pottery.

In January 2010,at 43 years old, I was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer (adenocarcinoma) with metastasis to the liver, kidney & lesions on my spine. A blood clot in my right leg diagnosed in December & caused by the tumor on my liver was the first symptom I had even though my oncologist tells me the cancer had been there about 3-6 months. Doctors cannot tell me why I have lung cancer having never smoked in my life, with rare exposure to second-hand smoke and, as my 2 girls call me, a "health nut"...with a healthy diet and almost obsessive about working out. During a 7-day hospital stay to treat a pulmonary embolism from the blood clot, the physician's assistant let the cancer suspicion slip while in my hospital room the 2nd night there. She called in the internist from their practice & he confirmed just how strong the suspicion was. I was alone...and I felt as if someone had thrown me against the wall of that room...shattered, broken, unable to be put back together.

In those moments alone in that room that Saturday night, I could not speak to even make a phone call at first. My tears flowed as if I had lost a loved one. I could not even pray at first...at least not anything that made sense to me. All I could do was reach for my Bible which I'd had sense enough to pack quickly on Friday afternoon when my doctor called & insisted that I go to the hospital immediately. Through many hours that night, I read scripture, finally made tearful phone calls home and to my parents and began to gather my thoughts. I began in Psalms and within moments, God gave me one of the verses I have focused on in the past 6 months...Psalm 3:3, "But you are a shield around me, O Lord; you bestow glory on me and lift up my head." There are many others, but this remains my battle-cry because he has indeed shielded me and lifted my head...especially when things look bleak. He has shown me, as he's lifted my head so many times in these months, that He sees me as beautiful in spite of my "brokenness". Oddly, this has become a battle not only against my physical illness, but against my own insecurities...a battle He's winning on my behalf...after SO many years of me trying on my own.

This blog is a way to chronicle my story...His story really, as I've renewed a child-like faith I'd grown lackadasical of. God is using this not only to teach me; to draw me close to Him, but to glorify His name as I seek to minister to others. I've made no promises to God of things I'll do if He'll heal me...I've never been good at keeping "promises" to God...people, yes, but God...well...that's another story. I just know that now, no matter what, this time is His and I will use it for Him.

I hope you'll join me on my journey of finding beauty within my brokenness...

Tricia