Starry Starry Night

Ever since I can remember, my family has always had a jigsaw puzzle going at the cabin.  We enjoy pouring over the fractured image as we slowly work together to bring it back to mended wholeness. We are far from puzzle experts in our family- puzzle nerds? Probably, yes.  But experts? No.

Prior to beginning this particular one, we (my mom and I) had been reveling in the recent completion of a rather difficult puzzle and jokingly said that we should "up our challenge factor" with this doozy... confident that we could figure it all out with some patience, persistence and time. Hubris.  Flagrant hubris.

Ten years later...literally-(which was about a month ago)....I sat on the floor beside the bed looking down at the plywood plank that held only the outline of this puzzle....resting there in dusty defeat and abandonment. In recent years, the mere mention of Starry Starry Night brought forth laughs, eye rolls, and joking dismissals from almost everyone gathered around our table.

Not only had it not been completed after all of this time, but it had not even been brought out into the daylight in recent years because of its sheer ability to frustrate us after only a few minutes.  It seemed the more we tried to fit its pieces together to make sense of the image, the further we fell into frustration, disgust, and hopelessness.  

Working on this puzzle had stopped being fun a very long time ago the struggle only continued because we never officially cried uncle and put the puzzle away forever.  We had tried, failed, tried, failed, tried, failed and tried and failed again and again and again until - on this most recent visit- we finally just gave up and quit with only a small fraction of the pieces connected.  We did the best we could do and it was absolutely not even close to being enough to bring forth the promised masterpiece result.

I was surprised as I pulled it out from underneath the bed on its plywood "table top"...shocked at how LITTLE was discernible of the overall desired image despite the mountain of hours and effort we had invested.  I was shocked at the smallness of the pieces, the tiny-ness of the mosaic images, but also struck by the beauty of the bigger image depicted on the box revealing the completed mosaic of all of the crazy little pieces blended together.

I wished the finished product of all of our efforts had turned out that lovely, but it did not. Not even close. As I gazed at the photo on the box, I was amazed at what could still possibly be amidst the mess we had made of it.  We had spent so many hours tangled up in the mire of the micro, and it had been a long time since I had looked at the image from the perspective of the artist...the completed, beautiful masterpiece.  So close, and yet also completely far.

It struck me as I looked at it - that in a way, this sad puzzle in its current state of disarray and mess was the perfect metaphor for my life in that moment, and I could not help but marvel at God's timing.  I just happened to be taking it apart at the exact time when my life felt unravelled, messy, unclear and in pieces with no hope of ever feeling whole again.  He knew ten years ago when we started this puzzle, that it would lay broken here on the floor ten years later before my broken heart- and that He would whisper to me in this moment and use it in an ever so small way, to help me begin healing.

He reminded me in that moment that He alone sees the ultimate, beautiful completed mosaic masterpiece of his creation that is our collective lives.  He reminded me that each little life touches another and adds essential beauty, light, color, shadow, shape and dimension to the beautiful giant masterpiece God is creating through our stories and lives.  He showed me as I looked at the tiny pieces that each one matters.

Each part of our journey matters to Him and to the overall masterpiece he is creating. Just like a puzzle is not finished until every piece is in its place (and what a HUGE bummer it is when you get to the end only to discover that one is missing!) our lives are not complete without the details...the stumbles, the struggles, the victories, the joys, the sorrows, the colors, the shadows, the praises, the grief, the laughter, the tears, the hugs, the meals, the moments, the memories....They all matter.  And they all add up to something completely masterful and beautiful that only the Artist can see as it is being created.  

I needed to be reminded of this as I have been sitting in my broken dreams and shattered hopes for months now.  Struggling to find beauty.  Searching desperately for hope and scratching for purpose. You see, it's real now.  We are officially not going to have another baby of our own.  This has been a deeply hard knowing to accept and the grief I've been feeling has matched in some ways and surpassed in others the grief I experienced with losing Luke.  The waves of loss have been crashing over me with greater frequency and rather than brace for their impact, I have just let them roll over me.  I have been allowing them to carry me where they will because I know that loving and crying and grieving this is the only way to truly accept it and move forward.

We learned this news back in May and I have not had words to write about anything since.  I have been frozen and paralyzed in my fear, doubts and sadness.  I have spent the summer quietly working on just being still before God waiting for him to reveal something, anything beautiful about this latest life development.  How can this part of my story possibly be part of something beautiful when all I can feel is grief, sorrow love and loss?  I have been working on my anger and my grief and my gratitude and slowly learning about how they are all connected in the mending mosaic called life.  

But that evening at the cabin as I quietly took apart the puzzle to return it to the box, I was also surrendering my dreams for my life...the way I wanted things to look and turn out, the family of faces I had always envisioned around my breakfast table, the way my family was going to look, the siblings I dreamed of having for Lily, the happy, joyful pregnancies I never imagined would not be mine, the ease of building a family the simple way, the marriage not overshadowed by constant grief and loss and sadness that I have never known... all of those dreams I have clung to, dreamed about, hoped and prayed for my entire life.  Not to be. Not my story, not my masterpiece.  And I cried big, quiet tears as I put each piece back into the box that afternoon...tears for what was supposed to be, but would not happen as I had deeply believed.

As I thought about the beautiful image we were unable to create with the puzzle, God whispered to my heart that He is the maker of beautiful things and that just because I cannot see the masterpiece He is creating with my life does not mean he is not creating one.  All of my attempts and efforts and plans and dreams brought me here, to this precipice of heartbreak and even more loss than I fear at times that my heart can hold- but it was here that my heart could finally open to hear that just because I could not put this puzzle of my life together the way I hoped and thought it would go, absolutely does not mean that He cannot dream up a better and far more beautiful way than I ever could- and make it happen! He can.  It's who He is. It's what He's about. He specializes in taking broken things and making them beautiful and whole again.

He is the maker of beautiful things and just like that, as I surrendered our story again to Him, I felt my perspective shift just a tiny little bit and my heart somehow cracked back open to hope and possibility. Perhaps not all was lost after all with the disassembly of that dreaded puzzle.  Perhaps when I get to see the great finished mosaic masterpiece of our life that is visible only from heaven, God will gently point to a darker shaded area and remind me of that particular starry starry mountain night.