When Brokenness Becomes Beloved

There are moments when the past surfaces so gently you almost miss it — a Google memory, a notification, a gentle nudge from the Holy Spirit saying, remember this. Remember what I did. Remember how you reached for Me.

Seven years ago, I held this Bible in trembling hands. It was new then, its pages crisp and bright, untouched. Weeks later, the world locked down, and I locked down with it. Isolation crept in like fog — thick, suffocating, threatening to pull me under completely. The kind of darkness where you're not just sad; you're drowning. The depression I'd fought so hard to climb out of came knocking again, and this time it whispered: This time it will take you. This time you won't survive.

I was desperate. Not the gentle, reflective kind of desperate. The clinging kind. The please-God-don't-let-me-go kind.

Then the Holy Spirit whispered something radical: Mark them. Colour them. Tab them. Show Me which verses are saving your life.

So I began.

Day after day, at that coffee table, my sanctuary in a lockdown world, I opened this Bible with markers in hand. I was not passively reading; I was actively choosing.

Which verse was healing today?
Which promise was holding me?
Which words from God were the difference between sinking and staying afloat?

I coloured them. I tabbed them.

Each colour a story. Each tab a lifeline.

The tabs bloomed like a prayer in rainbow — yellows for joy when I could barely remember what it felt like, greens for hope when everything looked hopeless, blues for the peace that passes understanding, magentas for the love that held me when I couldn't hold myself, purples for the strength I didn't have but desperately needed.

Each one wasn't just a bookmark. Each one was a decision. I choose to believe this today. I choose to cling to this. I choose You.

Romans 8 got so many tabs it practically glowed — "If God be for us, who can be against us?" I needed that. "All things work together for good." I clung to that. The Psalms got underlined in shades of grey and maroon where David was honest about his darkness — my hand moving across the page as if by reaching into his honesty, I could reach God.

Psalm 23 got tabbed because "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." Those words weren't abstract. They were a rope. Proverbs about rest, about not being alone, about the steadfastness of God — tabbed, because I needed them the way a drowning person needs a hand reaching down into the water.

Now I look at her — yes, I call her "she" — and my heart catches. The spine is creased and worn from use. The pages are warped from my tears. The cover shows its age. The tabs are bent and worn, some torn from being turned to a hundred times over. The colour-marker lines bleed slightly at the edges where my hands were trembling as I drew them.

She looks fragile, weathered, broken.

She's also the most holy thing I own.

Because here's what I'm learning about brokenness: it doesn't diminish value. It witnesses it. It proves it.

Every coloured verse is evidence of a prayer that was answered. Every tab marks the place where I found God waiting, exactly where I needed Him to be. Every worn edge tells the story of a hand that kept returning, kept colouring, kept marking, kept choosing faith when faith was the only currency I had.

The Japanese art of kintsugi repairs broken pottery with gold, believing the breakage and repair is part of the object's history and makes it more beautiful, not less. This Bible is kintsugi. Those colours aren't damage. They're testimony. Those tabs aren't wear. They're the marks of a woman who reached for God's garment and lived to tell about it.

I still use this Bible for church. Every Sunday, I carry her in and every now and again, someone notices. They lean in, their eyes soft with recognition, and they say the same thing: "Wow! That's a well-used Bible."

There's tenderness in that observation. Respect. A kind of spiritual nod that says, I see you. I see that you've lived with this.

And I always say the same thing back: "This is my antidepressant Bible. Without her, I wouldn't have survived the lockdowns."

It stops people. The word survived does something. It's honest. It's not poetic prettiness — it's the bone-truth of what happened.

That season tried to take my life. The isolation tried to convince me I was forgotten. The darkness tried to whisper that God had abandoned me. The depression tried to reclaim ground it had lost.

But there was this Bible. And there were these verses — the ones I chose to colour, chose to tab, chose to cling to. This Bible became my way of clinging to the Lord's garment, just like the woman with the issue of blood, desperate and faith-filled, reaching out and touching the hem of His robe.

Every tab was my hand reaching. Every coloured verse was my whisper: Jesus, I'm touching Your garment. Please don't let me go.

And He didn't.

Seven years later, I'm still here. I'm still marked by that season, yes — and I'm more whole for it. The isolation didn't destroy me. It deepened me. The darkness didn't define me. It drew me closer to the Light. The brokenness didn't end me. It became the place where I met Jesus most intimately — where I reached out in desperation and found His garment in my hands.

Every time I open this Bible, I see my own survival staring back at me. I see the rainbow of tabs — yellow, green, blue, magenta, purple — and I remember: I reached. I clung. I believed. And Jesus held me.

This Bible isn't a relic. She's a record of rescue. She's the testimony of a woman who was drowning and reached for the hem of God's robe — and discovered He was already reaching back.

Sometimes the most sacred things look the least precious to the world. They're not shiny. They're not perfect. They don't photograph well for Instagram. The colours bleed a little. The tabs are bent. The spine is creased like a woman's hands that have held on through the storm.

They just look loved. Used. Real. Fought for.

That's what draws me back to her. Not nostalgic sentimentality, but the bone-deep knowing that those coloured verses, those tabbed pages, that marked Scripture — it was the way I reached for God when reaching was all I had left.

My hand held the pencils.
My heart chose the verses.
My God held both.

The lockdowns almost took my life. This Bible helped me cling to the Lord's garment — and His grip has never let go.