Broken Toys Club

When we were children our parents protected us from the world. They would put on our helmets and knee pads. Made sure we knew not to get in vans. Told us never to go with strangers. Our parents tried to make sure we wouldn’t get hurt. And as we grew up, they would protect us a little less. We were now riding bikes around the block, then down the streets and soon across town without so much as a, “be back before dinner.” They started trusting that they had taught us right from wrong and introducing us to what the world could be.

It didn’t happen all at once. There were stages. Each one to be completed before we were allowed our independence. Each test to measure how much trust, how long of leash, how capable we were of being on our own. Our parents knew that as we demanded to stand alone, they would lose the ability to shield us from the world. We would make mistakes that we would pack away and carry with us. We would be shaped by our decisions. Choices that would forever bare on our hearts.

I think everyone has a certain level of baggage. We carry it around, some it back packs and purses, others in trunks and suit cases. I don’t think we make it out of this life without a minor scars. We go to war every day. We fight for our family, our loved ones, ourselves.

We say, “She has too much baggage.” Then we set her aside because everyone knows baggage is undesirable. It’s not as if she doesn’t realize she carries around something that started as a purse, but has grown three sizes. It isn’t that she doesn’t remember where she came from. What it was like to be bright and shiny. She does. I promise you that. She longs for when helmets could protect her from the world, but that time has passed.

After continuous cries of too much baggage, it can now be declared she is an official member of the broken toys club. Banished from a world of bright and shiny. She is even more broken than before. She lives with all the other toys: headless Barbies, melted army men, chipped tea sets. Her baggage was not a desirable commodity in the stock exchange.

She accepts her place among them. Her people of equal and often more greater brokenness than she. There she lives in the world that respects the different life journey that brought her to this place. Soon all that was bright and shiny and new will end up here, but that is not bad. The broken toy club is not a burden, and in her opinion shouldn’t be called broken.

This is the place where she learned that differences make us unique and give us a story. We don’t make it out of this world unscathed, but when we learn to see our faults, our mistakes, our battle wounds as something other than broken. We put ourselves back together. We no longer carry baggage, but scars that have shown us adversity and badges to wear with honor.