There’s something about children that makes you slow down and notice the little things again.
This past week at the beach, my daughter spent almost an hour searching for seashells. But what caught my attention wasn’t the fact that she was collecting shells – it was which shells she wanted to keep.
Not the perfectly shaped ones.
Not the flawless white shells still completely intact.
She kept reaching for the broken ones.
The chipped pieces.
The cracked edges.
The worn-down shells that most people would probably walk right past without even noticing.
Every time she found one, she would hold it up so proudly and say, “Mommy, look at this one! It’s beautiful.”
And honestly, I didn’t understand it. Why didn’t she want to find the ones that had a unique color or that was perfectly intact? What did she see in a broken, dirty seashell? There’s nothing unique about brokenness is there?
But in her eyes, those broken shells were just as special to her as the “perfect” ones I picked up.
Then it hit me – isn’t that exactly how God sees us?
So often we believe we have to be polished, put together, and whole before we are worthy of love. We try to hide the broken parts of ourselves – the grief, the mistakes, the disappointments, the scars nobody else can see.
But God has never only loved the “perfect” pieces.
Throughout Scripture, He continually draws near to the brokenhearted, the weary, the hurting, and the imperfect. The people who felt overlooked by everyone else were often the very ones He pursued most intentionally.
Just like my daughter searching the shoreline for broken shells, God sees beauty where the world sees damage.
What’s broken isn’t worthless.
What’s cracked isn’t discarded.
What’s been worn by life still has value.
Maybe even more value than before.
Broken shells tell a story.
The smooth edges were shaped by waves.
The cracks came from surviving storms.
The fading colors are proof they’ve been carried through tide after tide.
And maybe people are a lot like that too.
The hardest seasons of our lives often leave marks behind. Loss changes us. Grief softens us. Disappointment humbles us. Heartbreak teaches us compassion in a way comfort never could.
The world often tells us brokenness is something to hide – something that makes us less valuable, less lovable, or less useful. But God has always worked differently.
Throughout the Bible, He uses imperfect people over and over again:
Moses had fear.
David had failures.
Peter denied Jesus.
Thomas doubted.
Yet none of those things disqualified them from being loved or used by God.
If anything, their brokenness became part of their testimony.
Sometimes the very places where we feel weakest are the places where God’s grace becomes the most visible.
A shell that has been weathered by the ocean is still beautiful.
Not because it remained untouched –
but because it endured.
And maybe there’s something comforting about realizing God never asked us to come to Him flawless.
He simply asks us to come to Him honestly.
As I watched her tiny hands carefully gather those broken shells, I couldn’t help but think about how gently God holds us too. Not reluctantly. Not because He has to. But because He loves us deeply exactly as we are.
Broken edges and all.
And maybe that’s the beautiful reminder I needed most:
We do not have to hide our brokenness from God.
He’s already looking for us there.
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