An old man was sitting at his dining room table putting together a jigsaw puzzle. He had been working on it for quite some time. Off to his right, was the top of the puzzle box which bore the picture he was trying to piece together. In front of him were the few puzzle pieces he had managed to fit together correctly. There were other pieces scattered around off to his left, and the rest of the puzzle pieces were still in the box they had arrived in.
Into the room came his 6-year-old grandson.
“Hi Grandpa,” the boy said pulling a chair up next to his grandfather.
“Hey buddy,” responded the man as he continued to work on the puzzle.
The two sat quietly for a few minutes as the boy watched his grandpa take a piece from the box, study the picture on the box, look at the piece again, try to fit it with the pieces he had together, and then place the piece with the others scattered randomly on his left.
Noticing that his grandfather didn’t seem to be making much progress on the puzzle, he looked up at his grandfather with eyes filled with curiosity and asked, “Grandpa, how come you keep picking up the wrong pieces?”
The old man smiled and said, “They’re not the wrong pieces, I just don’t know where they go yet.”
Each puzzle piece that comes into your life bears meaning, but that meaning is not always apparent. When things happen that don’t seem to go along with our vision, it can be confusing and frustrating.
We take that “odd piece” and analyze it – trying to see where it fits into the grand picture we’ve envisioned. We scrutinize the piece in question, and then study our picture diligently. Then we examine the areas in our lives that seem to make sense and try to add this strange piece to what we have already figured out. Many times it’s a mismatch.
So what do you do with that odd piece? You put it in the ‘This doesn’t make sense’ pile to your left. Many things happen to us that we don’t understand from our limited viewpoint of our lives. Analyzed individually, they may seem like pieces that are out of order and don’t belong.
[ctt template=”5″ link=”maff9″ via=”no” ]Piles of the oddest pieces make the most beautiful pictures.[/ctt]
Don’t get down about the things you don’t understand. Learn to be comfortable not knowing. Continue to work on the puzzle of your life with the things that have been revealed to you. As you progress, God will reveal the things you need to know. With time, you will realize that those strange, odd, and often painful pieces weren’t the wrong pieces after all. You just didn’t know, back then, where they fit.
Vimbai E. is a content marketer, ghostwriter, and the founder of The Weight She Carries. With hundreds of articles and stories publishing online, in print and for broadcast, her love of language and storytelling shines through every piece of writing that bears her name.