Solving Puzzles
Sometimes I think life is just one giant puzzle. I feel like my little life is separated into 1000 pieces and God is slowly and methodically putting all of my pieces together. But He doesn’t always start with the edge pieces, because that would make too much sense. He decides to put a few wonky-shaped pieces together here and there, and I’m left looking at what seems to be parts of a zebra and a racecar, scratching my head and thinking, “What the heck is this going to be?”
If you haven’t noticed, I write a lot. I have a few Word documents that I fill with jumbled thoughts and childhood stories and life anecdotes. Mostly I write about God, because when I’m not thinking about Him, I want to be.
For me, reflection and writing help me put together a few pieces of this giant, confusing puzzle of life. I can look back and see that the most difficult things I’ve faced thus far were so clearly there to bring me closer and closer to Jesus. Dear God, I wish that heartbreak and trials weren’t part of the puzzle. I wish more of the pieces involved singing in the car on fun road trips and taste testing flavors of cake. I wish the pieces that contained loss of friendships or fights with family members were all replaced with happy tears and job promotions.
Yet most of the time, there are just a lot of seemingly-unconnected shapes lying in a mess on my bedroom floor, and I’m left agonizing over the outcome of the completed picture. I won’t see the glimpses of heaven until much later.
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But one day I’ll look back and see that God was putting together jigsaw pieces of His glory all along. And I’ll stop trying to connect the pieces myself and trust that He has a plan.
And I might just begin making leaps of faith and forgiving the unforgivable, knowing that God keeps forgiving me. I might sing Hallelujah through the hurt and hand out grace to my least favorite people. And then God will probably draw me to love those same unlikely people, because that’s the kind of wild thing He does.
And I might just smile at the fact that most of the time I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m confident that God is orchestrating a stunning picture behind the scenes, so I’m okay with the not-knowing at the moment. I’ll look down at my crazy pile of puzzle pieces and be thankful for my weird, wonky, beautiful life.