We all have pieces of our lives that we don’t know what to do with. Parts of us, or life experiences, that somehow don’t seem to fit nicely into the picture of us. Or what we think the picture of our life should look like. We tend to try to shove those pieces into the backs of our minds, pretending they aren’t there or hoping that somehow with time those parts will simply fade away.
These pieces often represent what we consider the failures of our lives, or at least somewhere that we somehow missed it.
Maybe a relationship that has been broken, a career lost, a dream unrealized, a potential we didn’t live up to, etc.
Here’s an example. When I stepped down from being a pastor and took a sabbatical, there were dear people at the church I served who left. These were people that I had invested in, loved and cared a lot about. Some of these folks haven’t done so well after leaving the church and I often feel somehow responsible. I can tell myself all of the right things but at the end of the day, this feels like a piece of my life that I don’t know what to do with. I feel responsible but yet I am not ultimately responsible.
You can probably identify your own pieces.
This morning I read this from the Book of Psalms: “Yahweh made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before him.” And later in the same chapter, “Yahweh rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes.” (Psalm 18)
Sometimes I think that’s all we can do- lay it all out before Yahweh. The good, the bad and the ugly. The things about us that fit and those that don’t. We all have that stuff.
I do believe deeply in my heart that somehow God puts the pieces together and makes something beautiful of it. Our part is to own it, and to lay all of the pieces of our lives before him. Not just some of them, or the ones we like the best ,or the pieces that make us look good, but ALL of them.
The promise and the hope is that Yahweh puts it all together into something beautifully complete. No more pieces, but a beautiful whole. It all belongs.
What is a part of your life that seems as though it doesn’t fit? That you don’t know what to do with? May you today find the grace to hold ALL of it before the loving gaze of Yahweh who brings it all together once again.
Yes! And maybe the Truth inside this truth is that we are already whole, and always have been. Maybe being broken is only an illusion that is created when we look at who we are (or who others are) through human filters. And that bringing all of who we are into the presence of God, hiding nothing from ourselves (God already knows it all anyway) allows us to see through the eyes of Love. And thus to know our True Idenity as God knows us to be…beautiful, complete, whole, perfect and, always, profoundly loved. From that place of knowing, true transformation of what feels like broken pieces in our external lives can take place. Thanks, Tracy!
Thank you, Mary, for these beautiful thoughts. Yes, God already does know our whole beings- all of the pieces- it’s just us who want to try to fragment our lives.