You must learn how to make it on the broken pieces.
-- Rev. Louise Williams-Bishop

A long time ago, somebody told you that your head was too big, your eyes were too far apart, and your nose was too wide. Today, even behind maturity, wisdom, and experience, you still see a big-headed, eyes-too-far-apart, wide-nosed kid. Back in the day, you couldn’t finish your work as quickly or accurately as your classmates; you needed additional help from your teachers to understand your lessons and assignments; and it took a long time for you to read all the words in a sentence without stumbling or someone having to help you. Thus, you were labeled “slow” or “special ed.,” and even now, you avoid reading road signs and directions aloud.

Years ago, you gave your heart to someone – on a silver platter no less – only to have it returned to you shredded, balled up, purple, and with small pellet holes in it that caused you to breathe irregularly. Because of that, you’re now unable to even feel it beating much less share it with someone who has shown you sincerity, believed in you and your dreams, and made space in their life for the post of patching up your heart.

You are broken and have scattered your pieces like dust in the wind never to be recovered in the same place again.

Each of us has been marred in some way by our experiences. Each of us has traveled our lives with hurtful and haunting stuff that others have said about us or to us, and felt marked by it for life. Some of us have never known anything but harsh, heartless, and disappointing stuff so it has defined how we think, feel, and behave. That’s all we have; that’s all we know; and doing anything different would certainly cause upheaval too tumultuous and awkward to consider at this point in our lives.

Or maybe behaving differently, reconsidering what “they” said, looking at your Self through new and gentler eyes would be the key that turned the lock of the door that opened to the other side of the wilderness. Maybe consciously finding all the pieces, wherever they are, and welding them together with descriptions, beliefs, and attitudes that are compassionate and supportive would be the answer that opened the door to peace, liberation, and a new way of Being. Perhaps intentionally putting your pieces back together, bit by bit and edge to edge, will allow you to examine how they came apart in the first place and carefully replace them so they never come loose again. Perhaps what you fuse back together turns out to be an extraordinary work of art – whole, beautiful, and priceless.

Sure, you can live on the broken pieces. You can continue to step lightly and on the shell of life. You can even get by on working with just a few shards to keep you breathing and living. But don’t you want to be whole, intact, and full again?

Sadiqqa © 2007