If it ain't fixed, break it.

Whenever I think about hammers, a random song pops into my head that we learned for some reason in show choir in sixth grade. I have honestly never heard this song outside of that context, but several years later it haunts me on occasion. These are the words I remember:

If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening - all over this land

I'd hammer out danger, I'd hammer out warning

I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters

All over this land

Whatever that means.

That near last line gets me: "I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters." Although I'm not sure what kind of love Peter, Paul and Mary are referring to - whether it's the love that's all we need that the Beatles sing about or the love that's a drug that Ke$ha is so hung up on - I have this visual of destruction in my head.

To me, hammers can help build things. Take a nail, hit it on the head with a hammer, and just like that, you can have two somethings put together. But hammers can also tear things apart. You hit the wrong spot and there's a dent. The other end of the hammer can be used as a fulcrum to dismantle things. Plus, it would really hurt if you got hit in the head or thumb or foot...actually, any sort of contact with a forceful hammer would not feel very nice and leave quite the mark. 

In the situations that I find myself in, often a lot of them are reruns: the same people making the same mistakes, myself messing up in the same ways, history repeating itself. I know I can speak for myself when I say that a lot of times, in order to be better, I have to be broken first. Patching up things temporarily, granted, works temporarily, but in the long run it's just a weak foundation for whatever it is I'm trying to build.

Love is difficult like that. In order to change anything, something must be taken apart. Broken. Our Savior was broken, quite literally for Pete's sake and yours and mine. It was the only way to change the cycle we put ourselves in. To be better we have to rid our lives of the things that will make us fall:

"He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful." - John 15:2

So to me, to "hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters" kind of means to see what isn't fixed. If relationships aren't fixed, maybe they need to be broken and put back together the right way. 

These are some things that I have broken over the years without any intention, motive, reasoning or purpose:

1. Sunglasses
2. Hair barrettes
3. G2 pens
4. CD players (these really get to be something that your parents want to stop buying you for Christmas after, oh, the third or fourth year in a row)
5. My CD of Franz Ferdinand's You Could Have It So Much Better (again, the CD player's fault)
6. Cell phones
7. Lids of shampoo containers
8. Binders
9. Hair straighteners
10. My camera

I may need to be broken myself.