When I was younger we had a 25 piece puzzle of Bambi (one of my favorite movies at the time).

I couldn’t get the pieces to fit together the way I was pretty sure they were supposed to…actually, the way I was VERY sure they were supposed to!!

So I took some scissors to the puzzle pieces and I cut them to fit.

Well, what do you know, they actually weren’t supposed to fit together that way and I totally ruined the puzzle.

I had that exact same impulse when I was putting together my tulip puzzle over the weekend.

The puzzle was from dollar tree and when I finished the border I had a whole bunch of edge pieces leftover.

I was so sure the dollar tree people screwed up!

Time to break out the scissors and make it fit!

Thankfully my husband walked in before the massacre began and when I showed him  he helped me to realize that even though it looked like I had pieces left over, In fact they were pieces that went on the inside of the puzzle but they just looked like edge pieces.

Yikes! I realized that is definitely one of my impulses for life as well. When I don’t really think things are fitting together like they’re supposed to, I take my scissors to it and make it work.

“I’m going to pound on the pieces until they jam together.”

In reality when you find pieces that really do go together they fit together beautifully, easily, and it all just flows.

The resulting picture is much prettier.

So…the puzzle that did turn out beautifully and all 101 pieces I actually did belong in that puzzle. (Thank you dollar tree you didn’t screw up after all.)

Here are my lessons learned:

The pieces (and you and I) are exactly the right shape.

We may be in a  place where it doesn’t seem like things are going to fit together, but we are exactly the right shape and have exactly the right skills.

We have exactly the number we need.

We may feel “not enough” for whatever situation we’re in…but we have exactly what we need!

We fit easily where we belong.

We can stop making ourselves fit where our pieces are not meant to be.

So if you feel like maybe you’re not the right size and maybe you don’t have exactly what you need to succeed I would encourage you to go buy a puzzle at dollar tree (or wherever fine puzzles are sold) and see what discoveries you have while you are putting it together.