Mondays Muttered Mumblings

This morning, after hugs and kisses dire threats and grumpy urgings , everyone was off to or back at their school schedule. In the few minutes of quiet Adorable Hubby and I finished the 1000 piece puzzle that our family has been working on since New Years Eve! Too our amazement all 1000 tiny little pieces were all there, I had found one piece of an otherwise completed section while cleaning up the playroom last night.

This is a busy time of year for any Mom, I also have a calling at my church that requires a significant amount of planning and coordinating this time of year. Then, there is dealing with the inevitable stress that we women put on ourselves with goals and plans for being the person we always judged we should be but have determined we're not. I learned a thing or two from fitting the fitting of little pieces into a hectic New Years schedule.

My puzzle fiend, #4, had put together the border of this cityscape puzzle on New Years Eve, then, there it sat for a couple days, a border and a jumble of pieces. I sat down one morning and began gathering pieces that looked like they might be a part of a giraffe. "How hard could it be to put together a giraffe?" A lot harder than you'd think, it turns out. I sat and stared at giraffe spots, I twisted and adjusted but just couldn't get any part of a giraffe. I gave up and began noticing letters that slowly came together to form a sign. And so it went I'd choose something that looked easy struggle, get frustrated then notice a piece or two that fit for something else.

My boys and some of the neighborhood boys would help a little here and there. Many times I'd come back to find the section I had painstakingly gathered pieces for finished by someone else. Then other times I would find a pile of pieces and finish someone else's work. We all had different methods and different approaches yet in the end all all 1000 pieces and different methods came together to form one amazing picture.

Such is life, we each work together coming and going starting for one, finishing for another, until it all comes together to form a picture worth framing. There was an instant of joy and pride in being finished with the puzzle but mostly a desire to keep going or start another one. I guess, as with most things, the joy is in the process, the journey, not the result or the destination. I'm really trying to quit looking at my life as a bunch of pieces and a misshapen border that is never going to come together the way I picture that other lives have.

I'm really trying to remember that the puzzle fiend in my life is the Lord and that he is always near, gathering little piles of pieces for me to work on and that though I can't see the whole picture because I'm to focused on the parts that are as yet still unplaced, my life is coming together as it should and in the end all of the pieces are known and will form an amazing life picture.