Life as a Puzzle

Hey there!

So… it’s 2020 and it’s been a long, LONG time since the last time I posted on here (over 3 years to be more precise). Having said that, in the background this blog has had several unfinished drafts, for one reason or another I haven’t managed to find the inspiration or motivation to complete them, perhaps sometimes the busy-ness of life gets in the way. Do excuse me if I’m not up to scratch on blogging (sorry, I am super out of practise!).

This blog post’s inspiration stems from me doing a puzzle filled with cherry blossoms. Mini story time: After managing to put so many pieces in place, feeling a sense of achievement and then trying to fit more and more pieces on, not one of them fitting and eventually finding a puzzle piece for one gap I had, noticing it didn’t fit quite right onto the piece next to one that I’d put there earlier, but it definitely belonged there… to find in fact that the previous piece I had in place was incorrect.

It got me pondering upon the times in life where we sometimes think something is right for us and we go to take that next “wrong” step in life. The puzzle piece was the right shape, had roughly the right image on, even the branches of the cherry blossom looked about right and was maybe just a tiny millimetre out of place, which was so difficult to see without going right up close and analysing the whole puzzle and the pieces around it. I guess this analogy made me think about all the times I thought something in my life was right for me, when it really wasn’t but it took a closer look or having made a decision for me to see that.

Ultimately, being a firm believer that God has a plan for each of our lives, yet we still have the freedom to make our own decisions. In this analogy I feel like the sense of coming back to look at it once I needed to fit another puzzle piece in and taking a closer look before I revealed the error I made reminds me of my own shortcomings in times when I haven’t looked to God before making a decision or prayed over a decision before making it.

Without going into detail the times in my life where I feel like this has been the case, perhaps for you or any reader out there some examples could be: going to university, studying something that maybe wasn’t right for you; taking a job that perhaps wasn’t right for you; starting a relationship that maybe ultimately you should have never started. I suppose in all of this I am not trying to say these “wrong” decisions in life aren’t actually necessarily wrong. In most instances, I believe it is important to take a slightly different course in life in order to learn new things and develop as a person.

The important or significant part for me is looking to God before I make these decisions, but for you who might not be a believer out there, maybe it is listening to that little voice inside of you or perhaps your gut might be talking to you or in some cases, maybe it is the checking in afterwards that is vital for you after you have say, gone to Uni, taken a job or entered a relationship. All in all, even though it might feel like we’re part of a puzzle or our lives are getting pieced together somehow and one look at the bigger picture can sometimes guide us and help us, whatever stage we are at.

Lastly, I’ll end with the below picture. Not only have I not blogged in forever, I also haven’t done calligraphy that I have wanted to do in forever. So, I thought I may as well kill two birds with one stone and incorporate some calligraphy in this post, below is a verse from the bible that I think fits nicely with this blog post and of course, in the same theme as this title: Life as a Puzzle. Hope you enjoyed and thanks for reading.