Yes, another post about puzzles. And life. And how puzzles relate to my life.
I'm pretty sure I've had this idea before and probably described it in great detail at a previous time but it came again recently but with another addition, another piece, if you will.
When I do puzzles, if I look too long at the big picture of it all, if I look at all the thousand pieces at once, trying to work out multiple parts of the puzzle at one time, I don't get anywhere and there is just frustration and near hopelessness at how I'm ever going to complete it. But if I can just focus on one aspect of the puzzle, one color, one pattern, one corner, that's when I begin to get somewhere, that's when the puzzle starts coming together making sense of it all. And when I'm focused solely on that part, I am calm and it comes easily without any stress or confusion.
There's peace in pieces in front of me.
Coming to the end of a long, significant, unimagined chapter of the story of my life, I'm surrounded by a vast array of pieces of the life that's been lived. When I look around, I want to understand, to dig deeper into everything that's happened, everything I've gone through, whether it's good or not so good, every lesson that I've learned and how I learned it and what it all means.
But as with a puzzle sometimes, when I start looking at one color, another completely different patter will come to view and I'll want to work on that piece, and then another comes and I'll want to go over there and then here and there again and all over the place. After going every which way for a while, I step back and realize that I put maybe 5 pieces together in that time. But if I would stay focused on just one color, just one pattern, and let it flow smoothly into the next, the pieces would come together so much better and with more excitement as the picture becomes clearer and clearer.
I'm just about to the end of a commitment made some time ago. I began this journey with YWAM four years ago now and a lot has happened in that time. It would take far too long to describe it all in detail (though that is in the process of becoming a thing...). There's been great experiences and adventures, difficult challenges that pushed me to and beyond my perceived limits, storms of all kinds (both literal and figurative), incredible people coming and going, gifts realized and strengthened, and a relationship with the creator of it all becoming deeper and more meaningful that I thought possible.
Though there's a lot to think through and remember and delve deeper into with the stories I've lived, there's a peace in the pieces that make it all up. There's peace knowing that it was all for good, that it was all for a purpose, that it was worth it. Peace that the pieces will fit together. Peace that the pieces make up an amazing picture.
I just need to focus on one piece at a time.
