Angels with Mended Wings

This week, I attended a conference that moved me deeply.

The Deflection and Diversion Conference of Washington State brought together law enforcement, mental health professionals, behavioral health providers, community leaders, prosecutors, defense attorneys, elected officials, and nonprofit leaders.

One room.

One shared hope.

To inspire and equip one another with strategies that prevent mass incarceration and make room for true healing and justice—for victims and perpetrators alike, who are so often victims themselves of adverse childhood experiences.

There were too many highlights for a single post.

But the final panel…

Four women with lived experience.

It was the embodiment of hope, salvation, redemption, and truth.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

The space had become sacred ground as their stories filled it with disarming precision. No shame. No pretense. Only refreshing honesty that oozed wisdom.

Not the kind of wisdom manufactured through professional credentials or attained through theoretical frameworks.

But the kind forged in the depths of hell.

A place where suffering, betrayal, abandonment, fear, torment, and despair fill the abyss.

Yet somehow also the place from which, by the grace of God, some return.

And when they do, they often return having shed the superfluous cloaks and veils of shame.

They shine. Brightly through their scars.

The fly. Freely with feather like lightness.

They guide. Confidently with the depth of their insight.

They became a mirror reflecting back to us our collective sickness.

How nauseatingly cruel we can be to our own.

How often we wound people and then judge them for bleeding.

And yet, with conviction and clarity of purpose, they rose from the ashes and sat before us as a testimony of what redemption looks like:

Angels with broken wings.

Befriending others trapped in the same shadows they once inhabited.

Again and again, they pointed to relationship.

To someone who noticed.

Someone who stayed.

Someone who refused to reduce them to a diagnosis, a charge, an addiction, or their worst moment.

They pointed to the way of befriending as the lifeline that pulled them from the abyss.

And now, in turn, they have become miracle workers.

In their own words:

“We are who we needed when we were broken.”

I often say:

Systems change when hearts change.

And hearts change when someone dares to be a friend.

No matter where you are, be the unexpected friend. You might just be mending the wings of an angel.