I believe there is beauty in brokenness
in 2012 I became friends with Chami
we were in our new town of Ishinomaki
and we were waiting every day at the
same bus stop for the kindergarten bus
to come and pick up our two daughters
now it would have been a normal bus stop
in a normal neighborhood except it
wasn’t that previous year that tsunami
had come and wiped out everything in
that whole neighborhood except for one
single gray concrete apartment building
tme and her family have been assigned to
lived there by the government after
their own home had been badly damaged I
would go every day and try to make
conversation with Jimmy but she always
looked very nervous and didn’t want to
talk to me I think for her she just
wondered what on earth is this blond
woman and her family suddenly doing in
my neighborhood so one day I happen to
bring our small white Maltese dog with
me and I pulled up to the bus stop and
Mollie the dog jumped out of the car and
went running right over to gme as she
did that she and me just without
thinking bent down and scooped up Mollie
and Mollie started licking her face and
his Mollie licked her face the tears
started flowing and so did her story
that previous year the nine point or the
9.0 earthquake had rocked Jimmy’s home
and it was followed shortly after by a
blaring siren that was saying get out
get out a tsunami might come she didn’t
know what to do she grabbed her young
daughter she grabbed her pet poodle and
went to the car and drove as quickly as
she could
to the elementary school she went in and
she got her son out of the school
brought him back to the car she later
said it wasn’t a very smart thing to do
but at times like that you can’t really
think so she drove back to her home and
as she was driving she looked in the
rearview mirror and she saw the black
wave coming toward them and she drove
faster and she pulled up by her home and
with one hand she grabbed her daughter
and with the other hand she grabbed her
son and she went running for the safety
of the second store of their home second
story of their home they got up there
and she went down partly on the steps to
go and get their poodle out of the car
but the water had already come in and
was filling their first floor from the
second-story window of their bedroom she
watched as her car and her poodle got
washed away on that day at a bus stop
Jimmy and I became friends a special
friendship was formed in a broken
neighborhood in a broken city out of a
broken heart
beauty and brokenness so what was I
doing up there in the first place six
days before that tsunami happened my
husband Eric and I had completed a
training in coal Bay for how to respond
in case there were to be a large natural
disaster in Japan when that disaster
ripped through the northeast coast of
Japan it broke our hearts for this place
that we had come to love those next few
days we gathered with our colleagues
from the organization were with caught
Asian access and we prayed for the
people and we try to come up with how we
might be able to respond I was sitting
there in one of these meetings with a
roomful of colleagues and all of a
sudden these
the guttural sobs just came through my
body
it was incredibly embarrassing but I
realized later that it the timing and
those tears were my calling and my
special invitation to be part of healing
a place that have become so broken over
that next year Eric and many others from
our region made countless trips 12 to 14
hour trips up north to take supplies
give out clothes make warm clothing mud
out homes help people in any way they
could we had four little children at
home and so I could only go up twice the
first time that I went I was helping a
team clean out a park now this part had
things that should never ever be in a
park it had big pieces of trucks and
piles of clothing dangerous shards
smelly fish but everywhere I look there
are these beautiful pieces of broken
pottery and I didn’t want to throw them
away and so I put them in a bucket and
saved them our family made the decision
several months later to move up there we
joined the team of Christians called b1
who were also choosing to live in the
tsunami area we knew it was going to
take a long-term presence to really make
a difference we had family and friends
call us in panic and say what are you
doing you have little kids you can’t
move there but for us and our teammates
it really was a privilege to join God in
walking with these people through the
next steps and through trying to help
them recover there’s a verse that I love
that Jesus says he said those of you who
try to save your lives will lose it but
those of you who lose your lives for my
sake will find it
and I think choosing to lose ourselves
in Ishinomaki has been one of the best
decisions of her lives so we moved up
there with our family and would put our
kids in the local schools
it was while we were playing our kids
taking our kids to school and picking
them up that I became friends with other
moms like GME and they would have smiles
on their faces when they were with their
children but when the kids went into
school
the real faces the real moms came out
and I saw devastated women who have been
broken by this disaster but what was
amazing to me was how they reached out
and helped me I was the foreigner and
the outsider but they helped me know
what they we needed to enclose or the
bus schedule
they were so kind to me in the midst of
their brokenness and as we became
friends I heard their stories of loss
loss of homes and family members and
jobs their stories and that broken
pottery that I kept seeing everywhere it
stayed in my heart and I felt a nutrient
forming I was having tea one day with
one of my new mom friends named you go
and I said you go I have this kind of
crazy idea can I tell you and she said
sure and I said what if we could get
some of the women from our community
together and do something with all this
broken pottery like make jewelry and her
eyes were getting bigger and she was
leaning forward and I said there’s only
two problems the first problem is I
don’t know how to make jewelry and the
second is I’m terrible business and
finance but my friend Yuko
she laughed and she said you know I have
had a hobby of making jewelry since I
was a girl and I was helping to run a
business that got washed away and you go
was my first sign up who was willing to
come on board so you go attach that G oh
she did they could it they had it
thank you and so we gathered we invited
you go and cheer me and other women to
come together and say let’s try to do
this our kids and their kids and
volunteers went out into the field and
picked up buckets and buckets of pottery
that we could use there were days that
felt overwhelming but I had received
really good advice
it was do the right next thing and so we
did that we did the right next thing day
by day it was amazing how people came
who could do what we couldn’t do who
could teach how to make jewelry and who
could help us make a website and do
social media October 2nd of 2012 we
started this new enterprise and we
needed to find a name for what we were
doing one of the women in our group who
had lost her mom and sister in the
tsunami she said sue whatever you name
it it has to have the word hope in it
because this is the only place I have
found hope and so the nozomi project was
born knows only is the Japanese word for
hope
I remember when we were working the
first time we had an online sale and we
gathered around our only computer and 15
or 16 of us we all just started cheering
as somebody who lived across the world
was choosing to buy a shard of Hope we
have been in business now for five years
and sometimes we’re amazed that we’re
not in the statistics of businesses that
fail but I have to tell you these women
have gotten so good at grinding they do
amazing work it’s been my privilege to
lead these women we’ve had 30 women over
these last five years who worked with us
these women have made 30,000 pieces of
jewelry that have gone out to 39 country
they are making amazing beauty and
brokenness one of the things we do at
Nozomi is each one of our Styles is
being named by one of our teammates one
of the women we work with in honor of a
loved one I’d like to tell you about
three of the pieces that I’m wearing
right now these are my SATA earrings
Sata’s grandfather is an unsung hero of
March 11th as a tsunami was coming he
flagged down a fire truck that was
trying to get away and he threw his wife
and sat his brother onto the fire truck
and then he hit the truck and said get
out of here and the truck made it out
with his family members but he didn’t
start his mom works with me and makes
these beautiful pieces every day and she
talks about how much healing she finds
from working with her hands and making
something beautiful this is my Mesa
bracelet mrs. mom was my shyest friend
on a schoolyard her mom struggled
because her son has severe autism and
she always felt shame on the schoolyard
she started working with us and she has
gained so much dignity and pride in her
work and she recently shared it a staff
meeting how much she’s changed and how
she used to view autism as a curse but
she said now I realized my son is such a
blessing to me and to my family this is
my mica ring mica could not leave her
home for a year because of severe PTSD
her little boys had to go live somewhere
else because she couldn’t take care of
them
mica started coming to nozomi project
sometimes just one hour in a week we
said just come whenever you can and
through that process she has found
amazing wholeness and healing each one
of these women have chosen to embrace
the brokenness of a disaster and I can
tell you they are even more beautiful
because of it but brokenness doesn’t
just happen in disasters does it it’s
all around us it’s in each of us the
time that I have felt the most
brokenness was the first five years of
our marriage when Eric and I struggled
to have children and were not able to I
felt like I had a broken body and a
broken heart yet it was through that
experience of pain that we’ve been
blessed with them the most amazing
things in the world to us are four
adopted children they are to me the most
beautiful example of transform
brokenness we’ve chosen as our tagline
from the so many beauty in brokenness
because beauty can bloom when we
experience transformation in the midst
of our brokenness
I think it is always a privilege when we
are able to give ourselves and lose
ourselves in places of brokenness and
broken that beauty can bloom in places
like washed out yards we washed out
neighborhoods or through stories of
adoption that are tragic and yet
beautiful or through women who gather to
create our youngest son is 7 my favorite
afternoons are Lent Ian comes running
home from school with broken pottery
that he picked up on the way home and
he’ll come running over to me with these
dirty fingers and his hands clutching
these shards and he’ll say mommy mommy I
found jewelry he has that I that I they
can imagine the beauty and the
brokenness the eye that’s able to see
what will be I believe we get that from
our Creator who is able to see the
finished product it’s a lot easier
though to see the brokenness in us and
around us isn’t it the greater challenge
is being able to see the beauty that’s
in the brokenness it’s something that we
have to practice it’s something that we
have to choose what are their broken
things that you’re holding in your hands
today I hope that like my son Ian we can
experience that brokenness not as
embarrassments to hide but rather as
treasures that are worth redeeming
please join with me in believing that
there is beauty in our brokenness
thank you
[Applause]
in 2012 I became friends with Chami
we were in our new town of Ishinomaki
and we were waiting every day at the
same bus stop for the kindergarten bus
to come and pick up our two daughters
now it would have been a normal bus stop
in a normal neighborhood except it
wasn’t that previous year that tsunami
had come and wiped out everything in
that whole neighborhood except for one
single gray concrete apartment building
tme and her family have been assigned to
lived there by the government after
their own home had been badly damaged I
would go every day and try to make
conversation with Jimmy but she always
looked very nervous and didn’t want to
talk to me I think for her she just
wondered what on earth is this blond
woman and her family suddenly doing in
my neighborhood so one day I happen to
bring our small white Maltese dog with
me and I pulled up to the bus stop and
Mollie the dog jumped out of the car and
went running right over to gme as she
did that she and me just without
thinking bent down and scooped up Mollie
and Mollie started licking her face and
his Mollie licked her face the tears
started flowing and so did her story
that previous year the nine point or the
9.0 earthquake had rocked Jimmy’s home
and it was followed shortly after by a
blaring siren that was saying get out
get out a tsunami might come she didn’t
know what to do she grabbed her young
daughter she grabbed her pet poodle and
went to the car and drove as quickly as
she could
to the elementary school she went in and
she got her son out of the school
brought him back to the car she later
said it wasn’t a very smart thing to do
but at times like that you can’t really
think so she drove back to her home and
as she was driving she looked in the
rearview mirror and she saw the black
wave coming toward them and she drove
faster and she pulled up by her home and
with one hand she grabbed her daughter
and with the other hand she grabbed her
son and she went running for the safety
of the second store of their home second
story of their home they got up there
and she went down partly on the steps to
go and get their poodle out of the car
but the water had already come in and
was filling their first floor from the
second-story window of their bedroom she
watched as her car and her poodle got
washed away on that day at a bus stop
Jimmy and I became friends a special
friendship was formed in a broken
neighborhood in a broken city out of a
broken heart
beauty and brokenness so what was I
doing up there in the first place six
days before that tsunami happened my
husband Eric and I had completed a
training in coal Bay for how to respond
in case there were to be a large natural
disaster in Japan when that disaster
ripped through the northeast coast of
Japan it broke our hearts for this place
that we had come to love those next few
days we gathered with our colleagues
from the organization were with caught
Asian access and we prayed for the
people and we try to come up with how we
might be able to respond I was sitting
there in one of these meetings with a
roomful of colleagues and all of a
sudden these
the guttural sobs just came through my
body
it was incredibly embarrassing but I
realized later that it the timing and
those tears were my calling and my
special invitation to be part of healing
a place that have become so broken over
that next year Eric and many others from
our region made countless trips 12 to 14
hour trips up north to take supplies
give out clothes make warm clothing mud
out homes help people in any way they
could we had four little children at
home and so I could only go up twice the
first time that I went I was helping a
team clean out a park now this part had
things that should never ever be in a
park it had big pieces of trucks and
piles of clothing dangerous shards
smelly fish but everywhere I look there
are these beautiful pieces of broken
pottery and I didn’t want to throw them
away and so I put them in a bucket and
saved them our family made the decision
several months later to move up there we
joined the team of Christians called b1
who were also choosing to live in the
tsunami area we knew it was going to
take a long-term presence to really make
a difference we had family and friends
call us in panic and say what are you
doing you have little kids you can’t
move there but for us and our teammates
it really was a privilege to join God in
walking with these people through the
next steps and through trying to help
them recover there’s a verse that I love
that Jesus says he said those of you who
try to save your lives will lose it but
those of you who lose your lives for my
sake will find it
and I think choosing to lose ourselves
in Ishinomaki has been one of the best
decisions of her lives so we moved up
there with our family and would put our
kids in the local schools
it was while we were playing our kids
taking our kids to school and picking
them up that I became friends with other
moms like GME and they would have smiles
on their faces when they were with their
children but when the kids went into
school
the real faces the real moms came out
and I saw devastated women who have been
broken by this disaster but what was
amazing to me was how they reached out
and helped me I was the foreigner and
the outsider but they helped me know
what they we needed to enclose or the
bus schedule
they were so kind to me in the midst of
their brokenness and as we became
friends I heard their stories of loss
loss of homes and family members and
jobs their stories and that broken
pottery that I kept seeing everywhere it
stayed in my heart and I felt a nutrient
forming I was having tea one day with
one of my new mom friends named you go
and I said you go I have this kind of
crazy idea can I tell you and she said
sure and I said what if we could get
some of the women from our community
together and do something with all this
broken pottery like make jewelry and her
eyes were getting bigger and she was
leaning forward and I said there’s only
two problems the first problem is I
don’t know how to make jewelry and the
second is I’m terrible business and
finance but my friend Yuko
she laughed and she said you know I have
had a hobby of making jewelry since I
was a girl and I was helping to run a
business that got washed away and you go
was my first sign up who was willing to
come on board so you go attach that G oh
she did they could it they had it
thank you and so we gathered we invited
you go and cheer me and other women to
come together and say let’s try to do
this our kids and their kids and
volunteers went out into the field and
picked up buckets and buckets of pottery
that we could use there were days that
felt overwhelming but I had received
really good advice
it was do the right next thing and so we
did that we did the right next thing day
by day it was amazing how people came
who could do what we couldn’t do who
could teach how to make jewelry and who
could help us make a website and do
social media October 2nd of 2012 we
started this new enterprise and we
needed to find a name for what we were
doing one of the women in our group who
had lost her mom and sister in the
tsunami she said sue whatever you name
it it has to have the word hope in it
because this is the only place I have
found hope and so the nozomi project was
born knows only is the Japanese word for
hope
I remember when we were working the
first time we had an online sale and we
gathered around our only computer and 15
or 16 of us we all just started cheering
as somebody who lived across the world
was choosing to buy a shard of Hope we
have been in business now for five years
and sometimes we’re amazed that we’re
not in the statistics of businesses that
fail but I have to tell you these women
have gotten so good at grinding they do
amazing work it’s been my privilege to
lead these women we’ve had 30 women over
these last five years who worked with us
these women have made 30,000 pieces of
jewelry that have gone out to 39 country
they are making amazing beauty and
brokenness one of the things we do at
Nozomi is each one of our Styles is
being named by one of our teammates one
of the women we work with in honor of a
loved one I’d like to tell you about
three of the pieces that I’m wearing
right now these are my SATA earrings
Sata’s grandfather is an unsung hero of
March 11th as a tsunami was coming he
flagged down a fire truck that was
trying to get away and he threw his wife
and sat his brother onto the fire truck
and then he hit the truck and said get
out of here and the truck made it out
with his family members but he didn’t
start his mom works with me and makes
these beautiful pieces every day and she
talks about how much healing she finds
from working with her hands and making
something beautiful this is my Mesa
bracelet mrs. mom was my shyest friend
on a schoolyard her mom struggled
because her son has severe autism and
she always felt shame on the schoolyard
she started working with us and she has
gained so much dignity and pride in her
work and she recently shared it a staff
meeting how much she’s changed and how
she used to view autism as a curse but
she said now I realized my son is such a
blessing to me and to my family this is
my mica ring mica could not leave her
home for a year because of severe PTSD
her little boys had to go live somewhere
else because she couldn’t take care of
them
mica started coming to nozomi project
sometimes just one hour in a week we
said just come whenever you can and
through that process she has found
amazing wholeness and healing each one
of these women have chosen to embrace
the brokenness of a disaster and I can
tell you they are even more beautiful
because of it but brokenness doesn’t
just happen in disasters does it it’s
all around us it’s in each of us the
time that I have felt the most
brokenness was the first five years of
our marriage when Eric and I struggled
to have children and were not able to I
felt like I had a broken body and a
broken heart yet it was through that
experience of pain that we’ve been
blessed with them the most amazing
things in the world to us are four
adopted children they are to me the most
beautiful example of transform
brokenness we’ve chosen as our tagline
from the so many beauty in brokenness
because beauty can bloom when we
experience transformation in the midst
of our brokenness
I think it is always a privilege when we
are able to give ourselves and lose
ourselves in places of brokenness and
broken that beauty can bloom in places
like washed out yards we washed out
neighborhoods or through stories of
adoption that are tragic and yet
beautiful or through women who gather to
create our youngest son is 7 my favorite
afternoons are Lent Ian comes running
home from school with broken pottery
that he picked up on the way home and
he’ll come running over to me with these
dirty fingers and his hands clutching
these shards and he’ll say mommy mommy I
found jewelry he has that I that I they
can imagine the beauty and the
brokenness the eye that’s able to see
what will be I believe we get that from
our Creator who is able to see the
finished product it’s a lot easier
though to see the brokenness in us and
around us isn’t it the greater challenge
is being able to see the beauty that’s
in the brokenness it’s something that we
have to practice it’s something that we
have to choose what are their broken
things that you’re holding in your hands
today I hope that like my son Ian we can
experience that brokenness not as
embarrassments to hide but rather as
treasures that are worth redeeming
please join with me in believing that
there is beauty in our brokenness
thank you
[Applause]
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