Everyone does puzzles a little bit differently; some people find all the outer pieces and work their way in, some work on specific colors or shapes, and some that are like me just jab at all the pieces until something fits. The really intense puzzle people don't even look at the box, they just know exactly how everything should fit, in case you were wondering I am not one of those people.
I'm sure many of us have heard analogies about life and puzzle pieces, but bear with me. Imagine that your whole life is a bunch of puzzle pieces. Each year/ moment/ event is a piece. Except we can't see the box...or most of the pieces.
Honestly, I have no idea where I will be in the next five years, or even the next five days. But I continue to try and put the pieces together myself. I know God is powerful and has a plan for my life, but I still try and put the puzzle of my life together. Sometimes I will look up to God (who has the box and knows what all the pieces are) and ask if these two pieces go together, then before he has a chance to respond I start jabbing away trying to make it fit. Once I break off a few of the unnecessary edges I proudly say that they definitely do fit together! Until much later when I realized that the original piece was supposed to fit somewhere else in my life.
I tend to see other people who have their lives together and I wonder why can't my puzzle look like that, and then I might even start trying to fit my pieces together to look like theirs. Sometimes I will see someone who also has a mind like mine and they are doing amazing things to help people all over the world, so I start trying to use my strength in the same way that they do...but it won't fit. We can't base our puzzle on the pieces that other people have put together.
The more I try to put my life pieces together the more I get confused. I ask God how does law school fit into the puzzle? What about the husband piece? What piece has my future city on it? What about the finance piece? I keeping looking for the pieces myself, when God is patiently waiting for me to hand him one to use.
At the end of our lives we will finally see every piece come together, but we can't right now no matter how hard we try. Lately I just keep feeling like God is asking me to give him the pieces of my puzzle one at a time and he will put them together. Okay God, you want my future location here take it, you want my time it's yours, God you can have all of my pieces because I literally have no idea what to do with them. I am so thankful to have a just and loving God to put my life together. I know that I am not giving things up just for fun, but that I will have so much more joy and peace once I am not spending so much time putting the pieces together myself.
God has already begun to show me how he has put pieces together over the course of my life and seeing what he has done in the past encourages me to keep trusting that everything will be put together according to his perfect plan.
Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you" declares the Lord, "Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
Stop trying to jab the pieces together and just hand off one piece at a time. God will create a beautiful masterpiece even better than what we can dream of ourselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment