One year ago today, Daughtry released this most powerful tribute to what I believe is the most beautiful form of human existence there is:

“BROKEN INTO PIECES!”

Meanwhile, can I just tell you about this vase you see pictured here? My beautiful Mother gifted it to me from The Smithsonian Store catalog over thirty years ago, and it’s been one of my most prized possessions ever since. If you didn’t already know, “cloisonné” is a decorative art form in which thin metal wires are applied to a metal base to create little compartments, which are then filled with colored enamel and fired to form intricate, shiny designs. The reflective metal becomes part of the picture itself, woven between all that color. It’s a mosaic MASTERPIECE … kinda like ME:

None of you will EVER know what really lies beneath my surface, what you’d find there, or how much it’s REALLY worth! When I’m losing ground now, I don’t get nervous, ’cause I know there’s only so much I can control! Oh! But even with all the cracks in the mirror, my reflection couldn’t BE any clearer. I’ve GOTTEN to learn to cope … even at the end of my ropes … while doing the best that I can to live with the broken pieces of me that were shattered! I can’t stop the bleeding that I’ll never “get over”, and it was, indeed, hard to move on, but I’m living to LOVE all the pieces of me! I’ll NEVER know who’s coming for me into the storm without a warning, and like the cold of the morning, oh, how it will cut straight to the bone again. But it was the silence in the battle that made me no longer afraid of my own shadow. Now, I simply reach for hope when I’m at the end of all my ropes and just do the very best that I can. I can’t change the past, so I HAD to let go to learn how to live with these holes in my soul.

Dear GOD, I really am the luckiest girl on this Earth and surely Your most FAVORITE daughter! Thank You for breaking me over and over and over. There’s LITERAL gold woven in between all the pieces that are ME. Just sayin’!