Broken crayons

There is something so fascinating about crayons.

I love coloring. It's such a huge stress relief to open up a coloring book and dominate those pages. While markers can be used for outlining and whatnot, it is much more sensible and appropriate to use crayons. They won't bleed through the pages, and they definitely make a person feel a lot more like a kid again.

Thanks to Crayola, coloring is made even more fun with such a variety of colors, many of which are uniquely named: "tickle me pink," "purple mountain's majesty," "robin egg blue," "neon carrot," "macaroni and cheese," "mango tango," "fuzzy wuzzy brown," "atomic tangerine," and many more that just make you smile when you take them out of the box.

Small box, big possibilities.

But, even if some of the crayons in the box look like they are the same (I mean, how many stinkin' purples can there be??), when you start to use them, you can see just how different they really are. It's fabulous.

One thing that is frustrating about crayons is how fragile they are. When I was coloring the other day (yes, 27 is still the perfect age to color), I guess I pressed too hard (I'm freakishly strong), and my beautiful cerulean crayon snapped in half. This was double sad, because cerulean is definitely one of my faves—it's a beyond-gorgeous color. But, alas, I knew the one solution that always bailed me out of these situations when I was a little kid.

Tape.

Sure, it doesn't completely fix the problem, because the crayon is still essentially broken, and you have to be super careful when you're using it, but it sure beats trying to stay inside the lines with half of a stick of wax.

I think people are a lot like crayons—we are all unique in our own special ways, yet we are also tremendously fragile. We've all been broken at some point in our lives or another, and we often feel like we are being held together with transparent tape. But we don't need the tape we use on crayons to try to keep us intact—we have someone here to repair us and restore us, making us even more beautiful than we were in our original forms.

A picture of beauty.

And, just like crayons, people can use their unique gifts to work together and create something lovely and magical. We can color pictures for God so breathtaking that they could never be contained in children's coloring books.

I think it's important to color your best for God every single day, knowing that He will make sure to take you in His loving arms when you're broken and defeated—and His redeeming love lasts far beyond that of simple office supply tape.