The Artwork

It was an incredible piece of art. Every piece was different.  They were all different shapes and sizes and colors.  They all had their own special qualities.  Despite how different they were every piece fit intricately with every other piece.  One could almost say that it was a living piece of artwork, as the pieces shifted in their relationship to each other as time went on.  Each piece supported every other piece.  Some days it appeared as if all the pieces came together to support one piece.  Other days they supported another.  Some days they were close together.  Other days they drifted apart.  No matter what happened though, all the pieces stayed together and they were beautiful.

Together, they were beautiful.

One day however, one piece decided that she was doing too much.  She felt that she was holding up another piece too much.  She told her that.  She told her that she needed to find other pieces to hold her up.  She wasn’t going to do it anymore.  The piece fell to the ground, shattered and crushed.

She began to doubt that the other pieces were going to hold her up.  Maybe the weight that she brought to the piece of art was too much.  Maybe she didn’t belong. Maybe her shape was too different for this piece of art.

She lay on the floor, full of cracks, her edges chipped.

She hurt.

In her pain she cried out to the Artist, longing to know whether she had any worth left.  She did not know how to exist outside of the piece of art she had been in.  She knew the Artist had a plan for her, but from the floor, with her very being cracked and her edges chipped, she could not fathom what the plan was.  From the floor, from her pain, she felt the Artist gently pick her up.  He held her close to himself, and then, with His infinitely big, and infinitely gentle hand, He pulled back a curtain that hung at the edge of the piece of art.  He held her up so that she could see. 

The new portion of the piece that had just been unveiled was even more beautiful than the portion she had known before.  The Artist indicated a new spot.  It looked different than her old spot.  She looked at Him with confusion.  There was no way that she was going to fit in that spot. Her edges weren’t the right shape. She had too many cracks.

The fall had been hard.

She protested to the Artist, she begged to go back to her old spot.  She knew that place.  She knew how the pieces in that section of the art worked, how they related to her and how she related to them.  She begged Him to let her go back to the place that she knew.

He heard her protests, but being the Artist, He had better plans for her.  He refused to place her back where she had been.  She watched with dismay as the place where she had been began to close over and the other pieces moved around, shifting, holding each other up, without her there.

She felt forgotten.

Slowly, gently the Artist began to polish her.  He smoothed out her rough edges, He repaired her cracks. Very carefully He placed her in the new spot He had planned for her.  At first it was super awkward.  She didn’t know these pieces.  They didn’t know her.  They didn’t know how to interact with each other.  She missed the security of her old position. As time went on they learned how each other moved and worked.  They became their own piece of art.

 And together, they became beautiful.