J is for jigsaw puzzle

Today is Alphabee-Thursday. That means my blog is brought to you by the letter J.

is for

My family is a big puzzle put togethering family. The aunts and uncles and my grandma gather together once or twice a week to work on a big ole' jigsaw puzzle one or the other has picked up somewhere. They take turns making pies to have at the end of the evening when they've exhausted their efforts for the night and are ready to kick back and relax. It's family fun-time together.

But puzzles can be tricky things.
Have you ever tried to force a piece of a puzzle into a spot that it just didn't quite fit? It doesn't work so well, does it?

For years I tried to do that with my life....make pieces of me fit into where I thought they should go. I was trying to exude this picture of "togetherness"....being all things to all people. The perfect woman, mother, teacher, girlfriend or wife, member of organizations, friend, daughter....
just trying to do it all, and do it all perfectly.

It didn't work.
It was exhausting.
And I wound up not knowing who I was at all.

I'm sure it confused others around me, too.

Then one day, it just hit me.
I DIDN'T have to be perfect.
I didn't have to do it all...or have it all.
I was happy with where I was in life...geographically, emotionally, professionally, spiritually, civically, and personally.

Who I was was....well, it was ok!

I liked me.

I didn't have to try and jam the pieces of my life into some unknown puzzle frame to make it look the way I'd always thougth it would look. The way it all fit together looked pretty dang special the way it was.

My puzzle had been completed, and I just hadn't realized it.

What a relief that was...to have that realization, because now it meant, I was ready for pie!