Why "Every Piece Fits"...

When the moment hit me that I would pursue this idea that's been brewing within me for several years, I spent a solid minute thinking about what name would fully capture MY purpose of starting this blog site.  And I mean that.  It took me one minute to come full circle regarding what I want any and all readers to feel.  Welcomed. Safe. Loved. Inspired. Understood.  I immediately thought to myself, if I am going to humble myself to share my life then I want all readers to know that I was a broken person at many points in my life and hope that I never portray that life is perfect.  In reality, we're all broken people really. We're all stumbling through life, sometimes with more of God's mercy than we deserve.  For that, I am eternally grateful.

While deep in thought about my life's story, knowing my broken past has been forgiven, redeemed and pieced back together by the grace of God, a sentence kept coming to my mind from a song I listened to in high school.  "I know the pieces fit."  It kept replaying in my mind.  "I know the pieces fit."  They do!  All of MY broken pieces fit.  Every.single.one.of.them.  Every piece fits.  Perfectly.  I'm perfectly imperfect.

You see, we set out in life with a strong set of beliefs and ideas of how our life should play out.  We make choices that are influenced by our faith, family, friends, school, environment, culture, country we reside in, etc.  Sometimes these choices play out well.  Sometimes these choices take us far off track from the ideal future we planned for ourselves.  I thought I'd go to an ivy league college, but instead graduated high school early and went to a local university.  I didn't try to transfer out of fear.  I thought I'd marry the man of my dreams, have a cute starter home, and kids by the time I was 30.  Instead I was married and divorced before I turned 29, and look upon what once was a terrible situation for me to be one of God's biggest blessings and life's lessons.  And there's more!!!  My life hasn't quite turned out to be the exact picture perfect life I fantasized about when I was younger; however, I have been pieced back together to be a stronger, better person than ever before.  I thank God for those trialing years.

I recently finished reading a book called Anything: The Prayer That Unlocked My God and My Soul and it specifically addressed this idea too.  I sat in the kitchen at work reading during lunch one day, and cried to myself because I felt so understood.  Jennie Allen described the idea as a scrap book.  We scrap book our ideal lives based on our external influences and when they don't work out the way we planned, we get upset and discouraged that life isn't working out or feel like God isn't answering our prayers.  We feel like we should be ahead of where we are when we compare ourselves to our peers and what they have.  We forget to stop and realize that even though the circumstance may not match our plan, it may very well be His plan for our lives.  Not to mention that our ideal future would look completely different if we lived in a less fortunate country where iPhones aren't prevalent and clean water is the biggest dream of all.  But, I digress...

I think it's important to share our story sometimes.  The things we've experienced whether painful or joyful shape who we are.  If we try to hide our story, we forget who we are and we fail to recognize the endless moments that God was with us both during the good times and the bad times.  We forget the answered prayers.  We forget the undeserved blessings.  We forget the feeling of triumph when we overcome something.  We forget the broken pieces we had to pick up off of the ground or the pieces we fought hard to keep and will have to fight for again one day.  We forget that His perfect love is the glue that mends us back together.  1 John 4:18 says "There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears has not been perfected in love."  I'm still working on that one myself, but I know my pieces fit.  I believe your pieces fit.  I believe it.  Every piece fits.  Perfectly imperfect in every way.