Bent Strength

Who knew that by bending you could make something stronger? That straight doesn't always equal stability? 

So there's this thing called a serpentine wall that the Medieval Brits popularized. Driving around modern-day English countryside, you see these ribbon-like fixtures - unique, unusual. But what makes them interesting is that they are only one brick thick. Anyone who knows something about structure-building knows that a wall that thin can't stand on its own. If built straight, it would instantly topple unless it had buttresses to hold it up. Walls of straight line must be reinforced, strengthened. These ancients figured out they could save on bricks by bending the walls and using the curves to provide stability and help it resist lateral forces. It was economical and aesthetically different. 

Centuries later, Thomas Jefferson would implement this incredible and smart design into the landscape of the University of Virginia, which he helped to found. Amateur architect that he was, he pulled on the medieval idea and, to this day, the university actually possesses the calculations he made on how much could be saved by implementing this genius into the layout plans. Walk around the place today, and you'll see these unique walls flanking the ten pavilions that extend out from its landmark rotunda. 

So what if those brilliant minds were onto something? What if the shaping actually strengthens? What if the bending saves? 

I'm no longer talking about walls of brick but rather, walls of the heart. Perhaps the straight-forward way isn't always the strongest way. Perhaps we need to be curved, moulded, bent in order to be strong, stable, steadfast. 

They say these walls may have proven to be an asset in war-time - aiding defense forces by causing oncoming troops to break from closed to open ranks and exposing them to defensive assault. Because the bends changed the landscape, they altered the fight. 

So what if the pain that our hearts have built around could make us stronger? What if the fight could be changed by simply looking at our heart-curves and seeing them as our advantage? 

I know the bending sometimes feels like the breaking. I know it seems like a straightforward way is the more logical way. But maybe that way would cause us to topple, to crumble under the lack of structural support? 

Take out the curves, and you can no longer stand on your own. Take out the hurts and the things that have shaped you, and you are a person of no strength. 

It is possible to take even a thin wall and enable it to withstand - withstand time, war, weather. Maybe this proves even the weakest heart, the heart whose walls are not thick, can still hold up. Can be strong. Can stand firm. All because of the way the bricks are turned. Build the bricks in a single line, and they will fall. Curve them and they will take the strain, disperse the load. 

We all have formative hurts - things we wish we had not been shaped around but things that still proved necessary in the making of us. In the strengthening of our inner walls. Life isn't always a direct path to the things most important. There are detours, setbacks, disappointments, pain. But when you must find a way to build around those things, perhaps your soul-walls get strengthened. Prepared for war. Made to endure. 

In that process, maybe it's proven true that the bending is our stabilizing. That the saving of us actually comes in the shaping of us. And if that's the case, then may these hearts be the better for it.