From Brokenness into Beauty

I am often asked how I got started working with glass and I simply say, “I started working with glass because of a drug dealer”.

Shattered and scattered across most of the floors, I finally walked into our “dream house” that we had purchase, horrified at how another’s actions could affect us. There was broken glass everywhere.

The renter of the beautiful Victorian house we had purchased “as is” had turned out to be a drug dealer, who destroyed nearly every restored room.
He knew eviction laws better than anyone. Neither the previous owner, the courts, or the police could do anything to speed up the process.
Though God had taken care of us, we were “homeless” until we could take possession of our “dream home”. We went to a campground in Canada with our tents and my three young girls, to wait for the news from the police that the courts had finally been able to evict him.
I never knew that it snowed in September in Canada, and we were freezing.
The campground had mercy on us, and gave us small trees they had ripped out, to burn in the campfire, to keep our girls warm, while we dressed them in layers of all the clothes they had. The car had broken down, so we were stuck until we were able to get it fixed. The bear hunters in the campground took my new husband into the city to pay a ridiculous amount for a new battery, but a least it was an easy repair.

Walking into the brokenness of our old Victorian became quickly evident that it was not going to be an “easy fix”.

This was not what I had envisioned in my mind, as I looked at all the shattered glass, and destruction.
There has to be a way of redeeming this, I quietly prayed, as I gathered the shattered imperfection glass that had been hand blown over 100 years ago.

I was a painter and had received a 2nd place in the first Art show I’d done, but
I had no idea how to do anything with glass!
I was able to take a class, and learned to cut glass and solder. The first piece I made was out of all the shattered and broken imperfection glass.
God still had bigger plans than I had ever dreamed.
I never intended to cut glass for a living, but within 6 months I had pieces in private collections in 12 countries. I’ve been cutting glass for over 30 years.
God takes the shattered and broken pieces of our lives and creates a stained glass window.
From all the brokenness, he can and will create beauty.