Broken Angel

 

I must have heard it a million times, but somehow I am still learning just now, that it is not my ability or skills that make me an artist, but the practice of doing it every day. It doesn’t matter how skilled I am or ever will be. What is important is the emotions that my drawings bring. We care about the stories being told. 

My brother shared a story with me today. It was a tale from our childhood together. 

He was little, and he had saved all of the money he had earned doing chores to buy Christmas gifts for his siblings. Only sadly, he broke a porcelain angel in the first shop we went into on the day we went shopping. He had to spend almost every penny he had to pay for it. He brought the broken angel home, and with help from my mom, glued it back together. 

His story ends with him giving me the angel on Christmas, and how I loved it all the more because it had once been broken. 

I am like that angel these days. A broken human being, but my cracks give me the will to keep going, and the understanding to be a vessel to illustrate stories with care and emotion.