The Puzzle of Life

I find that hardly a day goes by that I don't tell someone I will forward them my story The Puzzle of Life. I wrote it almost a year ago and when I sat down to put pencil to paper the words flowed so swiftly and eloquently that I felt as if God was holding my pencil. I love it when my writing flows like that. I know it is anointed and that I am working in my gift in a way that leaves me energized and feeling very blessed. Today I again found the need to pass this story on to several friends and thought it was about time to add it to my blog. I often send this to people when they ask why Dan and I are so happy and seem so at peace with ourselves and with life. The fact that both of us are sixtyish......well, hindsight is always 20/20. We can look back on a big portion of our lives and see how all the ups and downs and trials fit together to make us who we are today. The people we have met along the way, the grief, the fears, the celebrations, the joy, the poor decisions and their consequences.......all of it has been used in some form or fashion to complete the puzzle of our lives. The puzzle is not complete. Hopefully it will hold yet many more pieces. But one sure thing is that we have learned the people and the events and the opportunities we have encountered have miraculously fit pieces into our respective puzzles that help to complete the story of our lives in just the way God intended. I hope you will enjoy my writing and be encouraged to look at each encounter with people and with events in your life in new light. You are putting together your own puzzle.

The Puzzle of Life

Life is complicated to be sure. Julia Cameron, in her best selling book The Artist's Way, talks about synchronicity. Some call it coincidence or serendipity or luck. Cameron says, "We call it anything but what it is -- the hand of God, or good, activated by our own hand when we act in behalf of our truest dreams, when we commit to our own soul." (The Artist's Way, Tarcher/Putnam, 1992 by Julia Cameron, pg 64)
I believe our faith should be acted upon. Our lives don't just evolve without our active participation. God ordains and we have the responsibility to fulfill His Plan for us. In light of this philosophy, I like to think my life is much like a giant and intricate jigsaw puzzle and all the zillions of tiny pieces fit together in a way that, bit-by-bit makes sense. Sometimes a huge pattern of pieces fits together almost miraculously and it makes sense that each piece has to be there to form that section. One small piece can't be left out or the patterns don't go together properly.
Some of the pieces are crazy-- vague and seemingly void of clues as to where they might fit in but, given time and patience, those pieces will become intricate links to connect the other pieces together. No piece can be left out and no piece is insignificant.
There are cornerstone pieces to the puzzle -- pivotal points in life -- birth and childhood, adolescence and coming of age, marriage and/or career, old age and death -- the four corners of the puzzle. The outer frame between those corners are all the pivotal events that connect those four pillars, the necessary pieces that make us human beings with complicated, involved steps to maturity and aging. The four corners are the hinges to the doorways which open to all the stages of our lives.
It's beautiful if you look at life this way. It makes sense. We need all the pieces in the middle to help us learn and grow and cope and survive. Those inner pieces make up our inner being. We are complex. We need each piece of the puzzle to connect to the next piece. If we leave out a piece here and there we miss important steps in putting our lives together. There is a spiritual and physical balance that is necessary to connect all the parts.
Sometimes we get on a roll and all the puzzle pieces fit together really well in one section and we know we have "listened" to our Creator, our directive, well. We have shunned discouragement and anger and frustration and defeat and forged on till we made the right choices and placed the pieces in proper sequence and now it all makes sense. What a wonderful feeling to look at that section of the puzzle with delight and know that perseverance and dedication and keeping your eyes on the goal have paid off in the beauty of a well-developing puzzle picture so beautiful that it is obvious it is divinely ordained.
Now that section is complete; it is time to conquer another, then another..........until one day we will look at the puzzle and see clarity of picture that we could have never dreamed would appear. We think back on how those pieces fit together and are amazed at the intricacy and all the events, people and experiences that went into the making of this divine creation......one solitary life......