A piece of the puzzle

Every person, every interaction, conversation...it's a piece of the puzzle. My puzzle, your puzzle, their puzzle. I hate doing puzzles. I stare at them and stare at them and stare at them... None of the pieces seem to fit. Some "almost" fit, those are the worst. You think to yourself "I finally found a match" and place the two pieces together in a moment of triumph only to find that they are just slightly off and you have been defeated once again...by cardboard. Of course it's fancy cardboard so maybe it's not so bad but still, it's basically paper and it's getting the better of you.

So often I find myself saying, "we're just a piece of the puzzle and we may never see the finished product." From our perspective this moment, this interaction, this relationship... just looks like meaningless lines of color on an odd and useless shape.

But if we were the ones who created the puzzle, who drew every detail and cut out the individual pieces and threw them all together in a box anxiously awaiting the day they would be pieced back together to reach their full potential, what satisfaction we would find as the pieces did in fact join in perfect harmony to create the finished product.

When a puzzle is first created it's in one whole piece, but isn't it actually more wonderful after all the broken pieces are painstakingly pieced back together? And painful it is...mending our broken places by attaching them to the broken places of others. Painful, but so beautiful.

From one fancy piece of cardboard to another...thank you for letting me be a part of your puzzle and for being a part of mine.