The Grand Canyon. How beautiful! Our family went there when after my fourth grade year. I was in awe at its beauty, so much so that I bought a poster to put in my room when we moved to our new house. There was one tiny detail I forgot to mention…we were in a car, my family of 5, on the way to California from Ohio. In short, we were quite short on room to carefully store a poster. My father literally rearranged the car trunk for me so we could safely place the poster so it would not get bent. Every time we had to unpack the car at hotels to and from California he would ask me if it was really that important to me. He even offered to buy another poster for me when we got home so he wouldn’t have to arrange everything around the poster. I insisted it was very important because it came from the Grand Canyon.

So, we arrived home and my poster was just lovely! I was so excited to have it with me. Everything seemed just right for a 10-year-old. My dad would come in my room at night to tuck me and would admire the poster. One day he mentioned he might like a picture of the Grand Canyon, but there were no posters available to buy at local stores. He told me one night that as much trouble as the poster had been, he was glad I bought it. Now, I did feel a little sorry for him because he didn’t have a picture of the Grand Canyon, so I continued to look. Then, one day, I found it! It wasn’t the poster, but a puzzle. The plan was for me to put the puzzle together in secret, hide it under the couch on a poster board, and then glue it together and surprise dad! Everything was going smoothly until the final moments when I realized I was missing a piece. I thought for sure my brothers or mom had hidden it from me as a joke, but it was gone for good.

Not able to finish the puzzle, I decided to buy another puzzle at the store and look for the specific piece to match the missing one’s shape. I looked at every piece and couldn’t find it. After much thought I decided I was going to have to put the new one completely together. Do you know what I discovered? The puzzle maker had made a different puzzle out of the same picture. It was cut completely in another pattern. I couldn’t believe it. If the puzzle was the same picture, why bother making another pattern?

Isn’t this how we look at ourselves? God is our puzzle maker. We all are the same picture…his child, but He has chosen to make us into different patterns. I admit I am guilty of trying to fit people into my puzzle mold. I expect their lives to match up to mine. I get frustrated with them when I need another piece to my puzzle filled and they can’t fill it for me. I expect them to think like me and to act in “normal” ways. I expect them to be me and get annoyed when they don’t want to be me.

But that is not how God works. He has chosen to cut a special and unique pattern for each of our lives. I have wasted so much time trying to fit a certain piece of someone’s life into my likeness that I forget their piece fits into their own. Likewise, how many times have I taken my pieces and tried to fit them into another puzzle? I try to be someone’s puzzle and aspire to be like them. God wants me to use my pieces, the ones He made specifically for me, in my own puzzle. He desires for me to rest in the puzzle border; my own boundaries. He longs for me to relax in who He made me to be. He has cut me into the pattern He desires.

Lord, help me to remember which pieces are mine. Help me refrain from picking up other people’s pieces and trying to complete their puzzle. Help me let go of being someone I’m not and truly blossom under the person You desire me to be.

© 2012 Susan M. Sims

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