Welcome to my home. We make the most of what we have, here. Old items get repurposed; yard sales and thrift stores a regular habit. Our home is more…eclectic comfortable than it is stylish, but we like it.
I didn’t always. I’ll be honest. I used to long for a well designed home with coordinated themes and a personal aesthetic. Of course, that takes money, and our money was always needed elsewhere. On things like food and electricity.
I like it now, though. I like the way it comes together piece by piece and feels like home. Everything has a story, and while not everything is particularly attractive, it is appreciated.
I feel like my home, and my attitude toward it, is a reflection of life in general.
Often, we get it wrong. We want it to look a certain way, feel a certain way, a certain way we’ve been told we’re supposed to want, a certain way that denotes success. Someone walks in our door and they know we have it together, we’re adults that can take care of things. We have that job, that income, that social status. We have achieved that illusive goal of ‘happiness.’
Except, the only people I know who have attained their happiness are the ones who stopped pursuing it. They pursued peace instead, or purpose. They realized that happiness is a fleeting emotion and a very strange thing to base our lives around. The more entitled to happiness we believe ourselves to be, the more difficult it is to find. The less we worry about it, the more we attend to our small moments and sense of perspective, practice gratitude for what we have rather than listing what we have yet to acquire, the happier we become.
There is beauty to be found in joining disparate elements, and things we declared undesirable are in fact our favorite or most serviceable item in the wrong position.
I was raised to look for my ‘perfect path,’ to find God’s will for my life and pursue that to the end. Well, that would be nice, if I lived in isolation and my choices were the only ones affecting my options. And, sometimes, my mistakes take too long to correct. Positions fill, or opportunities close before I realize I misread the situation. It happens to all of us. This doesn’t mean my life is now empty and pointless, I missed my chance and just have to make do from here on out any more than I have chronic health issues and lost a child because it was ‘God’s will’ for my life.
We are broken people living in a broken world. We make mistakes. People make mistakes that affect us. We are hurt. There is pain. God doesn’t want this for us. But none of it takes him by surprise. Would God prefer I have four living children instead of three? Yes, but he can help me use my loss to comfort others. Should we have had…any of several different positions over the years to carry out his plan? Yes, but you better believe he can use us where we ended up just as well. There is a loss, a cost, a sacrifice. A piece of pottery or glass is broken. But the God I serve can pick up the pieces and create a mosaic more beautiful than I ever could have imagined.
So welcome to my home. I’d like to discuss some of the sharp edges, some of the glimpses I get of the pattern I still don’t understand. But I want to get to know you, as well. What are some of the things you wish more people would talk about? What are some of the things you’ve been taught that just…dig like a pebble in your shoe? What do you doubt? What do you hope? What will keep you coming back, convince you this is a conversation?
Pieces of the Mosaic 