Puzzled Pictures...

i wish somehow that my pieces really fit into the perfect puzzle picture framed and hanging on my life's door that everyone seems to see and keep admiring...

a beautiful picture that has been hung for visual entertainment... something for your eyes to rest upon and provide an illusion of "put-together-ness"... a pretty picture display that without hesitation or deeper investigation, you turn your head and look away. completely unaware that the puzzle is not complete or anywhere close to accurate.

the pieces have been forced together, and glued into position so that the image before you is what it should be. but in reality, if you look closer, you will see the edges don't quite touch and there's space where none should be. but only if you step closer... really want to see what lies beneath the image hanging in front of you.. will you find these small but wide imperfections.
tracing the branches of the trees only to find flowers at the ends instead of leaves, oceans bleeding red instead of glorious blue seas, but you think that i'm just trying to be artistic in my expression, not realizing that it's painful dysmemberment that you are witnessing...

please look beyond the frame, through the glass, and see the puzzle that lies beneath.
i know that it won't be quite as endearing or sweet, but it will be truth. because as much as we would like to think that life just "goes together" and things are just "meant to be", i would say that things rarely happen as they are destined or how God designed them to. see, we have choices, chances, and opportunities to determine the fitting of our pieces, the putting together of our puzzles and since we are not divinely inspired or blessed with the gift of foresight, we tend to get it wrong much of the time.

then begins the painstaking process of trimming edges, pushing of pieces, trying to make things fit into spaces they were never meant to.. and we wonder why the pictures are never quite clear... or seem like something is missing. it's the result of misplaced puzzle pieces that we are trying to make conform to place in which we've put them... not realizing that while we might have a gorgeous Robert Kinkade in this frame, if we just let our pieces fall where they may, exist in the space in which they end up, we may have a Van Gogh, DaVinci, or Picasso... but we aren't patient like that, free like that.. we must put things where they're supposed to be so that we can display what others believe to be a "pretty picture"... after all, perception is reality..

and who doesn't want to be percieved as a perfectly placed puzzled picture hanging on display for everyone to see...

but then you're not... not really.