A few years after grad school, I returned home to live with my parents. I was broken, lost, self-destructive, and sad. It was impossible to see the way out of the hell I had created for myself. I just knew I was at rock bottom. Everything about my future was uncertain.

My dad gifted me the most powerful object lesson during that somber chapter. Sitting at the potter’s wheel, he held up a piece of clay.

“Sometimes the clay doesn’t turn out exactly how the Potter intended. Does this mean he throws away the clay?”

He paused, and gently looked me in the eyes. “No. He doesn’t give up on it. He simply re-centers and reshapes it.”

It’s been more than a decade since he told me this, but I think about it often. Sometimes life- in its lumpy, pathetic, lopsided form, just needs more time.

Needs generous amounts of patience and grace and second chances and hope.

Needs the humility to stay malleable.

Needs to believe there is something greater in store.

You may have thought you were destined to be a cup. And you felt angry and frustrated when you saw all the perfect cups around you while you were being shaped into something different. Trust the Potter.

You have a different purpose.

Perhaps you meant to be a bowl, deeper and wider.