Life's Mosaic

It has been a difficult few days.  It is not always fun to be the momma.  Sometimes you have to be brave enough to speak hard truths even though your children may hate you for it.  Hopefully, only temporary hate, though.  The hope is that they will see the love behind the words and find they are still able to love their momma despite it all.

I try to keep perspective when I am feeling down and despised by someone I love.  I try to remember that there are much worse things than having your child angry at you.  I have faced harder things.  Like the death of a loved one.  I will take my child's fierce anger over that anguish any day.

We have all had good days, even great days.  Days filled with laughter and sunlight and joy.  They are often unexpected gifts.  Just this past week I was doing who knows what upstairs and stopped just to listen to and enjoy the sound of two almost grown girls laughing together in the basement bathroom as they got ready to go out for the evening.  It reminded me of so many other laughing, fun moments I have had the privilege to be witness to as my children have grown.

Life is so full of brightness.  We sometimes forget that when we are struggling and down.  Hard times can leave us feeling that the darkness is all there is and we start to lose hope.  We can go for days, weeks, or even months or years struggling with dark and difficult times.  When that happens, we begin to wonder why God has forsaken us.  Why hasn't he answered our prayers?  Why do we suffer in the dark?

And then I thought of something.

I thought of the moments of my life like the pieces of a mosaic.  Each day of my life, each moment I live through, is a piece of that mosaic.  On the good and beautiful days, I am placing a brightly colored piece in the mosaic.  On hard or difficult days, I am placing a dark piece into the mosaic.  As I work, I can only see one small piece of the whole artwork.  Only one small portion of my life.  It is easy to loose perspective when that is the case. I can't tell you how many times I have told my students to step back and look at their work from a distance... to see the whole picture and gain a new perspective.

Such it is with our lives.  If we could see our lives through God's eyes... see the whole mosaic with all the light and dark pieces in their proper places... we would see a beautiful soul in the process of evolving into something wondrous and extraordinary.  A mosaic of only light pieces would be bland and uninteresting.  A mosaic of only dark pieces would be dreary and equally uninteresting.  But the patterning of light and dark... that makes the composition stronger.  And stunning to behold.

No one wants dark and difficult days.  No one wants trials or tribulations.  Yet, when looking back on them, we recognize their worth.  I am a stronger, more empathetic person for the darkness I have overcome.  I can serve and lift others who are struggling in similar ways.  I am who I am because of all the experiences I have lived through; not just the happy, easy moments.  In fact, it is actually the difficult times that refine character and make us stronger.

Am I asking for more dark pieces in the mosaic of my life?  Absolutely not!  But I recognize that there is a reason for the struggles, and a purpose and pattern to all we experience in this life.

Remember to step back from time to time and look at the bigger picture.

Seeing it can give you strength.