July 10, 2023
Sara Beutler ’03 Worley
Isaiah 64:8
“But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.”
I took in the pieces of my broken, chipped and shattered frame, and with it my heart, full of hope…
Having moved 13 times in our 16 years of marriage, inevitably we’ve had most of our worldly possessions damaged at one point or another. There are not many “things” that mean a lot to me. Not many material possessions hold much sentimental value. But there is one object that has symbolized “home” over the years. As soon as it is hung on the walls of our bedroom, no matter where we are in the world, we are home. My grandmother painted it for us as a wedding gift, and it has adorned the walls of our bedroom since day one of our marriage. It is one of those things that symbolizes our life, and it is precious. Sadly, it had its turn with our most recent move, to be broken.
Because of the nation-wide pandemic lockdown, this mangled frame has been dejectedly sitting in a corner of my bedroom, awaiting the day that I could have it repaired. I saved all the little pieces of the damaged frame and after months of complete closure, I was finally able to take it to a little framing shop that had recently reopened in our little Greek village.
As I entered, a sweet, elderly lady greeted me. I asked her if she spoke English and she did not, but as she looked sympathetically at the broken pieces I held, she gestured towards a man at the back. Amongst all of the soft words uttered from her wrinkled lips that sounded much like gibberish to my untrained ears, one word I recognized: he was the “master.”
He, too, did not speak English, my translator app wouldn’t work in the store, and I was dismayed to realize through our pantomime conversation that the frame was damaged beyond repair. I’d have to pick out something new. I would never again have my picture be the way I had always known it and loved it.
Through gestures and guesses, I tried to choose a new frame and began to grieve even more, the damage to my treasure. With a lot of words I couldn’t comprehend, the great master took my precious frame. With four gentle, decisive movements, he broke the four sides of my frame at their seams before my very eyes, and wrapped them up in tape. He placed them in my hands, and then he spoke. I didn’t understand a word he said, but he reached out kindly, gently took the broken remnants back, and set them aside. The frame that I loved was gone. He took my picture, placed it carefully to the side and said, “Avrio,” a word I recognized which means, “tomorrow.” And so, after questioning “tomorrow” several times, with zero control, and no ability to express exactly what it is that I was wanting, I had to just leave my treasure in the hands of the master, hope that he understood, and just trust. I walked out of that shop with the hope of tomorrow, leaving my treasure behind without a name or phone number or any way to identify me, and had to trust the master to do his restorative work. He had my broken treasure. I had nothing.