An Empty Eggshell?

I found this empty half of a Robin’s egg on my run yesterday afternoon. I stopped mid-stride to pick it up and look at it. I felt the dilemma of this empty shell in my bones. Perhaps I’m an empty shell. Maybe I’ve given all I have to give and now there’s nothing left to do but disintegrate and decompose on the sidewalk. I thought about the baby that emerged from this shell, living, breathing, fulfilling its purpose, existing and living on the earth for its appointed time. How lovely that this was shelter and life for that little creature for a while, a home that offered protection for delicate growth.

Now what? The natural order of things say that we are born, we live, we birth, we die. Not just once though. We find that our lives are filled with these rhythms of living and dying, birthing and burying, and also, repurposing and recreating. Even in the dying, there is resurrection. When things die and go into the ground, they become part of something else.

This eggshell came on the heels of a poignant conversation I had with a client. We’ve been dreaming up a piece of art for her home in Lake Tahoe. With tears in her eyes and voice, she described a moment around a tree where it became apparent that the clay pot holding the tree needed to be broken in order for the roots to be able to spread out. I thought of this as it relates to the egg. Sometimes in order for the new to emerge, the old containers have to break open. It doesn’t mean the end of the old container; it means that there is another way for that container to exist in the world.

The eggshell will be repurposed into a piece of art. If it had stayed where it was, it would’ve gone into the ground to continue its work of nurturing some new, fragile form of life.

Perhaps there is a resurrection, a change of purpose in your own life? Survey the things that may need a breaking open to create something new.

And shoot me a note. I’d love to hear about your own surprising resurrection.