You Can't Unscramble an Egg. And That's OK.
Every morning I come downstairs to a desk littered with books. Celtic devotionals. Philosophy. Meditations. It's not lost upon me that the chaos on my desk mirrors the tiny tornadoes of thoughts that prance about my brain. And yet, each morning I perch in my chair and seek the calm despite the chaos.
Yesterday, one of my books opened to a passage I highlighted years ago. It's from Ronald Rolheiser's Forgotten Among the Lilies:
"We need a theology of brokenness — one which teaches us that even though we cannot unscramble an egg, God's grace lets us live happily with renewed innocence far beyond any egg we may have scrambled."
I've scrambled a lot of eggs.
Not just scrambled: cracked, runny, yolk broken, sunnyside-up-gone-wrong, whites impaled with teflon shrapnel.
For a long time, I carried a belief that the work of healing meant returning to my unbroken shell. That recovery, growth, transformation, whatever we call it, was about returning to what I was before things got messy.
Here's what I've come to understand: change cracks the shell. We bulldoze through it, telling ourselves we'll return to who we were before things broke. But you can't unscramble an egg.
And that's the beauty of transition.
Transition is when we pause. When we feel every bit of weight those cracks bring. When we allow ourselves to start to ooze, and transform. But it's in picking up the broken shells, piecing them together as best we can, and stepping slowly into something new…that's where transformation lives.
Careers crack the same way lives do. The leader who made the wrong call. The executive who flew too close to the sun. The professional who worked tirelessly to build a career that fell apart anyway.
A theology of brokenness doesn't ask for performative recovery. It asks you to stop pretending the egg was never cracked.
It asks you to recognize it. To honor it. To bring the scrambled version of yourself along into whatever the next chapter might be. Not as a liability, but as the truest, most earned part of who you are.
The hardest part has been learning to love the scrambled parts. That's what I think Rolheiser means by a theology of brokenness. Trusting that a source of love, whether from above or within, can hold us firmly and with care, as if we were never broken at all.
With you in the cracks,
Marni Pasch
If you're in the middle of a transition, cracked shell and all, this is exactly the work I do. Send me a message or email marni@paschcoaching.com… I'd love to see if I can be of service. www.paschcoaching.com