I love to do puzzles, but it is much easier if you have the box top “big” picture to guide you. Life is not like that. We do not have the “big” or the “whole” picture at any given point. We get one puzzle piece at a time and over time as we put them together in what makes up our individual life picture so we start to see a part of the “big” or “whole” picture of our life. However we never really know how much of the picture we are seeing at any given time. It may seem that it is only a corner of the puzzle, but it may actually be the majority of our life puzzle or we may think our puzzle is nearly complete when we have only put together half of the puzzle.
Putting Together the Pieces
That is what makes our lives interesting and exciting – in both good ways and difficult ways. My mother once told me if we could see the whole picture at any given point in our lives it would be too much. At that point I so wanted that 100,000 foot view of the “whole” puzzle of my life that I didn’t believe her. Now, I can see how true that is. Every piece of our lives builds on the past, but it does not make complete sense until we see the next piece in our puzzle. However, if we saw a piece or pieces down the road, they may not make any sense because the past that they build on is still the unknown future at that point. It may make us want to change our future or the “big” picture of our lives.
It can be very frustrating and difficult to put a piece in your puzzle when it doesn’t make sense because we don’t know the future. However, it is just one piece of many that come together to make a “big” or “whole” puzzle of your individual and unique life. Just remember this is just one piece of many and it will fill a piece of your life puzzle. The challenge today is to look back at another time in your life and see how completely that piece has filled in its spot in your life. Start thinking about how this piece of life fits with another piece and how it might fit with the next.
Blog post written by Angela Bailey, Legacy Retreat Coordinator
