Have you ever found that sometimes it’s the small things that mean the most? You know kind of like the saying big gifts come in little boxes. While our old historic home was certainly something I did and still get excited about, I find that I love the little surprises of days long ago that surface at the homestead.  

Not too long after moving in and the snow began to melt and I began finding various things outside in the ground. Buttons, jewelry, marbles, and pieces of pottery are just a few of the items we have found.  To think of the hands which buttoned clothes preparing for the days work, or closing the clasp on a necklace declaring an outfit complete, and the slipping of coins into a pocket…one coin being enough to buy lunch. So small but significant in the day of someone’s life as they were worked for or gifted.

With every freeze and thaw of the ground, I always keep my eyes peeled for something to surface so I can add it to my collection.  I store hand forged nails, pottery and glass from drinkware to insulators in Ball jars on the shelf in our living room making it somewhat of an organized collection of what was once deemed as trash and is now loved as treasure.

One squatty little Ball jar is my most favorite because of the shades of blues from various bits and pieces of colorful pottery and glass that have worked their way through the soil just outside our dining room door. When bending down and picking it up, It’s as if I’m able to hold a collective part of the homes 184 years of history in my hand and it’s oddly the neatest feeling that undoubtedly leads me down an unexpected path of wonder.

I wonder how many of us find ourselves figuratively in this jar. Like a new plate, whole with no chips or scratches, we eventually encounter experiences which leave us a little bruised or broken, sometimes shattered us within shaping us along the way.  From there we either choose to forget it and move on, deal with it or subconsciously let the pieces we are constructed of settle in and take deep root in our lives only waiting to eventually rise to be confronted-similar to the shards of glass in that very jar.  What do you typically do in situations like these?

I must admit that I am one who used to absorb everything and move on.  What I didn’t realize at the time I was planting seeds much different than I plant today. I was figuratively planting seeds of doubt, negativity, failure, imperfections, guilt, and lies. With every passing year, every day built upon the last and what had been planted established roots within me, that weren’t all bad, but certainly weren’t ones in which would produce flowers, rather weeds if you know what I mean.

It wasn’t until this year during the summer months when we were hosting yoga classes on our property did, I finally realize how much I tucked away and how much was about to be dug up. Now don’t get me wrong, I think most would say they move in a forward motion through life and that processing everything would likely hinder our movement forward. It’s one of the benefits to being young, you’re resilient and ready for the next best thing whether what’s behind you is resolved or not.

Through each of these weekly yoga classes, things I hadn’t remembered slowly resurfaced and shed light on why I might feel a certain way or why I see things the way I do. If it was as if these yoga classes were a key unlocking an explanation as to why  who I am today and a gift in giving me the ability to work through parts of the past, finally make peace with it, and begin restoring and accepting the much different person I am today.   

 
While the jar of pieces will never be able to be put back together into what it once was, there is the ability to change the approach, take what is broken and become even stronger then when created. Like the Japanese art of Kintsugi, we can become even more beautiful through embracing the flaws and imperfections that make us extremely unique and special in this great big world we live in.