When I was a kid, I learned about Vincent Van Gogh in an art class. I loved mixing paint with flour to make it thicker and attempting to imitate the great artist’s work. I always felt for Van Gogh. I think I had a tender spot for his troubled end-of-life. The fact that he cut off his ear was disturbing and fascinating to me. I also saw it as no coincidence that Van Gogh lopped off his own ear when so much of his artistic career was fraught with difficulty and misunderstanding.

Van Gogh had a message. Namely, he wanted to transmit the good news of the gospel through his art. One might look at Starry Night and see the glory and mystery of God, but what of Van Gogh’s charcoal drawings? Depending on how well-acquainted you are with Van Gogh, you may not have even known that he made charcoal drawings at all. Go on and take a moment to do a web search of them. I’ve included an example here below as well.

As a kid, I had the same reaction to Van Gogh’s charcoal drawings as many of his contemporaries did. I thought, “Where’s the gospel in that? How do those dark lines and dreary shadows indicate anything about the goodness of God?”

Fast forward about twenty years, and here I am. A lot of life has happened. I wrote a book not too long ago––Healing Beauty, which takes a snapshot of some of the most difficult parts of my emotional journey. I expected that people might react with anger or disgust––and some have––but I did not expect so many people to react primarily with sorrow.

Coming from the extreme brokenness of my life before I wrote Healing Beauty, I see the progression in the book as a journey of victory. Yes, it deals with moments of great brokenness, but the main point––to me––is not the brokenness. Brokenness is a given; it’s just life. The main point is that God is present in the brokenness. There is no brokenness that is so broken that God will not inhabit it. Healing Beauty is honest about how broken I became, but not to the end that I might smear my brokenness all over my readers. God forbid! My hope is that my readers will know what is the height and depth and breadth of God’s love and that they will know that the wounds for which there is no earthly remedy can find their healing in the love of our Creator.

I realized only recently that Healing Beauty is my version of Van Gogh’s charcoal drawings. I see good news in what, to others, must look like bleak smears on a canvas. Interestingly, I also see Van Gogh in a new light as well. I now recognize that he saw what few people are likely to see without the context of deep trauma, rejection, and wounding: God present in the most unexpected places, inhabiting the space where we ourselves find it unbearable to dwell and making all things new.

I have made my peace with the fact that Healing Beauty will not be everyone’s cup of tea. Some will read it and be incensed. Some will find it too depressing. I won’t cut off my ear over readers who find it difficult to connect to this book, I promise. I stand by my work and the gospel that I preach through it for the sake of those who read it and know that they are seen. These are the people whose lives are charcoal drawings, but they have not yet noticed the presence, glory, and majesty of Immanuel, God-With-Us. This is the God who does not demand we put on a good face or clean up to receive grace but comes to us in the bleakness of our circumstances to impart healing and life.