I’m putting together puzzles with Lala.
“I got it!” she says, pushing in a section with pudgy fingers smeared with blue marker.
“You were right, Mama!” she says as I fill a gap.
I hold the piece of a brown horse’s tail, and don’t recognize the horse’s behind that matches it. I hold the fruit and can’t tell if it lives on the tree at the top or the shrubs in the corner.
One section is nearly complete. The frame of the puzzle is almost in place. Then there’s the middle — so much left of that pasture with its horse hide polka dots and streaks of blond mane and tail and all the fluttering butterflies.
Soon we complete the puzzle (it’s only 48 pieces after all), and my mind returns to its own fluttering.
I’m thinking about what to write and am whirring with the litany of questions and deep thoughts that have followed me into the week.
Where do I experience temptation? In my places of perceived strength or weakness? Are those the same thing? Why do I feel confident one moment and completely lacking the next? How do we help our girls grow in confidence? What growing pains can we protect them from?
I’m all over the place. Pieces here and there. Some in my hand, some lost in couch cushions, some I’ve never seen, some I’m just plain trying to force.
I’m thinking about my girls and all that lies ahead of them, and all they know and all they don’t know, and all the living they will do that I will know nothing about.
Intentional living preparing them and us, in some small way, for what’s to come. But what strengths and weaknesses will define their lives? What will they choose to believe?
As Dr. Seuss would say, I’ve done so much thinking that my thinker is sore, and none of my thinking feels ready for a post not to bore. (Sorry, Dr. Seuss, you probably wouldn’t say it like that.)
I dearly want to be vulnerable in this place, and I want it to be a place of freedom for me and for you.
Today, being vulnerable means plain old honesty about the fact that sometimes life is the horse’s behind, and I just don’t know where the tail is.
Most of the time I don’t hold pieces that fit neatly together on a wooden board. I don’t cobble together the picture and grin with satisfaction or place it contentedly on a shelf.
This life is a mess of pieces with its finished sections, jagged edges and gaping holes.
Sometimes I’m holding a piece that I feel so ready to lay down where it belongs, but can’t. Other times I lay down a piece I’m not quite ready for, and all around it the gaps remind of my prematurity in laying it down.
Then there are those sweet time-stopping moments when sections give shimmering glimpses of the final product.
Only the Maker holds all the pieces. Top to bottom, side to side, beginning to end. He knows the time to hand us a piece, knows the time for keeping them in His grasp until the sky, pasture and trees fill in a little.
If we’re living awake, we’ve got questions, and they don’t fit in completed pictures, neat categories and smooth-sounding words.
So I guess I’m saying that as part of what I “do” here, I’m creating room for space with more questions than answers.
A place to rest a little more in the not-knowing.
So these pieces may very well be called “Open Endings,” though I might just change my mind down the line.
Tell me now. I’d love to know: What are some of your open endings? What questions are you wrestling with these days? Is there a piece you are holding in your hand that doesn’t seem to fit?
Connecting through the power of stories written, spoken and lived
At this time of my life, I live life one day at a time, and TRY to let go and let God!
Yes, one day at a time. That and the letting go — good for me, too. Always.
Ashley- it is so neat how you can take an ordinary game like a puzzle and find a metaphor in it for life with God. Your wording about intentional living is so thought provoking and how I try to live my life as a person and as a mother and as a woman of faith. . . .yet, sometimes we need to leave room for questions. My tagline on my website is “Live the Questions” by RM Rilke.
Great post!
Thank you so much for your comment, Cornelia! I love that — “live the questions.” That seems to me so much about the convergence of intentionality and leaving space for the questioning. The doing and the being. So so good.
Let me start at the top…I adore that photo of little Lala’s legs, so pudgey and cute, on the quilted tile floor that was itself a puzzle!
I love the notion of life as a puzzle, and that sometimes we’re at work on the horse’s behind. ;)
I love the reminder that much of life is messy, the next move indiscernible, the “big picture” at times lost to us. I love the reminder that at times we’re in a place of not-knowing and that we needn’t rush to fill that space with pretended knowing. Thank you for this Ashley…it’s like permission (and oddly enough, that’s what we need sometimes) to be exactly where we are, without knowing exactly where that IS or where to place our next foot. In doubt. In the dark. RESTING in this place of not-knowing. For me (to answer your question) that place looks like this – I have a dream of a creative venture (you know the one) – I have it very clearly in my mind – but the how of it, amidst a life that feels already full, that is murky. Very murky. I can’t explain why I’m so OK with that…maybe it’s about having the faith piece.
As always, I so love your writing, Ashley.
I love that photo, too. I think that needs to be on our (future) gallery wall. I’m also crazy about those legs. So fond of what you say, “not rushing to the pretend knowing” — yes! And I say yes to that creative venture and that space of the waiting and resting and faith. Yes to faith!
Display worthy for sure! Love this post sissy! I certainly needed this today!
I’d like to post two decidedly distinct comments. The first is about your puzzle analogy, which I very much enjoyed! It got me thinking that our lives are kinda like a 3-D puzzle. Where the only pieces we see are those of a single ‘cross-section’ of the puzzle cube, representing our lives if you will. Pieces ‘residing’ on planes perpendicular to those we see, only provide us with the smallest hint of what they are about, by their intersection with our ‘cross-section’. By the very nature of a cube, there are a countless more pieces off our plane than on it. Life is mysterious yet inter-connected.
The second comment is more down-to-earth in nature. Do you think Dr. Suess really has a medical degree?
haha! good one Donald!
I like that idea of the 3-D puzzle. I am no good at those, but when Michael and I first started dating, he and his mom used to do a lot of them. So many applications with geometry and the interconnectedness of pieces in the known and unknown planes — interesting. And about Dr. Seuss, I’ve always assumed he’s a PhD, but I suppose I could be wrong, as life is indeed mysterious, as you say.
I feel like when I allow myself to be okay with the questions, and to surrender completely to them, that is when the answers start coming, but not because I will them to come. Some days it’s so much easier than others….lovely post.
Thanks for your comment, Chris. You’re so right about the answers coming in the letting go. Here’s to more days where that isn’t such a struggle.
While a picture puzzle challenges to find its solution-and delivers it- our terminal life does not afford us with predicable answers. Convenient it would be if the ‘woulda,coulda,shoulda’ of life never entered into our equation. Of course the answer to our own puzzle lies beyond our comprehension. We have faith to carry us.
Living life with no regrets does help to keep us in the now, with faith to carry us through. You’re right, Pete
Yes, Papa, we are without predictable answers. ALL the answers will only be known beyond this terminal life, as you say. This is indeed faith, Papa and Don. Thank you both as always for your very thoughtful comments.