Living in 2000 Pieces

How do you take the pieces of your life and turn it into peace? Let’s use Legos to answer this question. Well, when you have four children, under the age of 16, everything you do is an event.   One event we love the most at our home is Christmas.   I try very hard to make sure that we don’t do anything extra and unnecessary on that day. We make sure not to have people over or visit others because when you, as the parent, are in the minority at a hostile situation your mistakes become evident.  My children have never gotten so violent, rebellious and unlovable until it is Christmas with extra people added.

One year my two oldest became obsessed with Legos.  If you don’t know what those are, let me quickly explain them to you.  Legos are small interlocking hard pieces of plastic of different shapes and sizes that when put them together they make structures like buildings, vehicles, scenery and people; it all depends on what you purchase.  So, one Christmas my son wanted the Lord of the Rings Lego set and my daughter wanted a Lego Tree House set.  Both sets had over 2000 pieces each.  That Christmas, my husband and I sat with them for hours and hours putting the structures together and, surprisingly, I loved it more than they did.  I was taken back a little by the amount of pieces and the detailed instructions given in order to put these things together.  When I was a kid you just got a bag of random Lego pieces—long, short, thick, thin—and it was up to me to make my structure as I saw fit.  It was fun trying to make a house, but sometimes there weren’t enough pieces and I had to use a different color to finish off the base.  Other times I had way too many pieces left over, and I couldn’t do anything with them.  In this day and age, Lego has upped their game and perfected their pieces, but there is one difference, you have to follow the instruction manual.

Living That Lego Life

What do you do when your life is more like Lego Pieces than a well built estate?  What do you do when life isn’t coming together the way you thought it would?  I remember learning the most about myself, such as, insecurity and shortcomings, when I was a new mom to Joey and Rachel.  I couldn’t understand what God wanted from me.  My husband was working 50-60 hours at the church, and I was at home with my 2 year old and newborn wondering if my life was reduced to potty training and nursing.  Motherhood, and being a wife, was a wonderful opportunity, but I was battling with so many random thoughts of myself that I was convinced I was broken.   Behind closed doors I was fighting so much anger and resentment for where I was, mostly because the picture I had for my life wasn’t the one I was living.  I found myself taking the random pieces I had been given and tried to make a life out of it.  My dreams however were bigger than the pieces I had.

It was as if I was 8 yrs old again and was given a bag containing pieces of my dreams, and now I was asked to make something out of it without any guidance or understanding of what everything was for.  I felt like I was trying to make everything fit, but it wasn’t.  So I became frustrated and angry.  I neglected other aspects of my life because I felt surely God wasn’t going to be able to use this.  Raising kids and being married is NOT to be taken lightly. I learned that later on.  I would find out much later that the pieces of motherhood and being a wife was the most important, precious pieces given, but without the other the Lego pieces of my life, it was just a frustrating, confusing season.    I liken it to sitting down expecting to watch a Batman movie and a Barbie movie comes on.  It’s not what is expected.

In Steven Furtick’s preaching, “Piece it Together,” he gives you another perspective to living a life in pieces.  I don’t know how many times I’ve looked at my life, my situation or even my future, and considered it all, shattered because of all the random pieces.  But what if you and I aren’t as broken as we think we are?  I’m not saying that we aren’t weak or sinful.  What we are given to work with in this life may just be exactly what God wants you to have, in order for you to draw closer to him.

If you are so bent on focusing on your pieces of your so called broken life, then your weaknesses won’t drive you towards God.  They will drive you way from him and into an existence dominated by condemnation, guilt, legalism and maybe resentment.  We’ll end up striving to fix ourselves, to clean ourselves up, to make ourselves worthy of God.  Or we’ll give up on the process altogether because it’s hopeless.   (Steven Furtick- Unqualified pg. 111)

Putting those Pieces Together

There are things that we have to do in order to put our Lego life together.

1. You need to use your manual.  It didn’t matter if my son was putting together his Lord of the Rings Lego structure or if my daughter was putting together her Lego Tree House  We still needed to use the manuals.   If we try to put together the pieces of our lives with no vision and understanding of how and where each piece is supposed to fit the result of what we are putting together will have missing pieces or too many pieces left over.  (Philippians 4:6-7)

⁶ do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

God wants you to come to him and He wants you to read his manual in order to figure out where every piece is supposed to go.  You don’t have to guess.  Your pieces turn into peace when you find Christ in your crisis.

2. Don’t be discouraged if what you are handed doesn’t look like the box. Sometimes we look at the box our pieces came in—our wildest dreams—and we wonder why our lives don’t look anything like the picture God gave us.

He who began a good work in me is faithful to complete it.  Philippians 1:6.

On Christmas day, what we started gets finished.  There was never a Lego structure that was started and left unfinished.  And God is not in the business of starting his masterpiece in us and leaving us unfinished.  Be patient with the process.

3. Don’t take any piece for granted.  Sometimes, we overlook the small parts of our lives.  We wish we could just remove them, but every part is important in the building of that life.  We are so quick to throw out something we can’t understand about ourselves, but the very thing we think is unnecessary, may be the very piece needed to complete you.

Weekly Challenge:

In this week’s challenge, I would love for you to read the story of a man name Joseph.  He was a 17 years old when God gave him these big dreams.  He knew that God was going to do something amazing with him but his dream sparked jealousy in his brothers.  He was thrown into a pit, sold as a slave, accused of rape, thrown in jail and left there to die.  How was he supposed to accomplish the dream God gave him?  Well, read Genesis chapters 37,39-41 to see how God used different pieces of his life to create greatness.

I also would love for you to watch Steven Furtick’s preaching called “Piece it Together”. It is so inspiring and encouraging.  Finally you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook @throughthewinters.com