Every life has a puzzle, not every life has put their's together

​After my presentation the other day, I had lunch with an African American woman. She was nearing 70 years old, yet, she was still a ball of energy working for the child protective services unit at the local social services agency I presented to.

She said to me, "I get what you said about how we often trust as adults the way we learned to trust as children."

She went on to tell me the story of growing up with her mom who battled Schizophrenia. She said it was always young Caucasian police officers who came and put her mom in the straight jacket and took her away. She said I never understood it, my mom was a good mom, why are they taking her away?

She said it shaped the way she came to trust men and police and Caucasian people.

Yet, there we were, having lunch. Her and me the white man. No one could have shown me more love and admiration. It's clear she's connected a lot of events from her past to where she is today, and that shapes where she goes from here.

What a gift that is to the young people and families in her community.

I was eating dinner alone last night. I listened in to a conversation between 4 construction workers eating at the table behind me. One of the men, a man probably in his 50s, began talking about his high school football days.

In his story, he was the only high school freshman to ever start on a football team in the county he grew up in. Then, he injured his knee and never played again. The future he dreamed of was lost so he decided to join the military, but because of the injury, even the military wouldn't have him.

As I listened to him, I realized so much of the peace I heard in my new friend's voice at lunch the other day was the work she'd done putting together the puzzle pieces of her life. This man was still trying to do that over dinner with his friends, but getting nowhere.

I felt his struggle in that. I felt the weariness of a life of trying to put the puzzle together with people who might not be the best at putting puzzles together.

I told someone the other day, reflecting on my birthday, I've come to appreciate every moment of my life. Every moment, past and present. I appreciate every moment not as good or bad, but simply as a moment in the puzzle of my life.

My mission these days isn't to determine if that was a good day or a bad day - that can often come with judgment, especially from self - but rather, where does this day fit into the puzzle of my life.

When you can come to realize every day fits into the puzzle of your life and who you are becoming, you can come to live in total gratitude.

And peace.

These days I am often able to recognize lives that have put their puzzles together, and those that are struggling to do so over food and drinks with buddies.

One fills my heart with joy; the other breaks it. Because I have been both in my life.

Every life has a puzzle.

Not every life has put theirs together.

It's helpful to remember that.