making the pieces fit

We love puzzles around here. I'm pretty good at them, if I do say so myself. I have fond memories of time spent in younger years completing large jigsaw puzzles, especially with my mom's parents.

I remember when Jordan first became interested in puzzles which require the pieces to nestle together. He can do many on his own now, though he still uses more of a trial and error/memory effort than filling in the border and working through like-pieces to finish the middle like I do. Sometimes he even attempts to jam pieces in where they don't belong, only to find it skews the picture, then try again.

My favorite thing about puzzles is that they are predictable. I can pull out a box, dump out the pieces, and glance at the full picture every once in awhile when I'm stuck. I confidently expect an end result just like the box promises me.

may flowers

Gotta catch up before Jordan turns THREE next week!
[Ironically we have some pretty "May flowers" that Jordan obsesses over, but I don't have pictures of them :)]

Umbrella crafts ushering in the sunshine after a row of rainy days!

april showers

I have been super way behind on posting on our blog more often than not this year.

Currently:

I finally... FINALLY... got myself to slow down a little. I'm feeling more alive and human most days, thank goodness! To turn the tv off more. To get off facebook (thanks StayFocused and RescueTime!) I've been reading my Bible almost every day [so close! :)]. Two weeks ago I actually started exercising again. I've been able to hang almost all laundry for weeks now [as this blog post says it: "Hanging clothes outside is a simple act, but I love it because it makes me slow down"]. I'm going to bed earlier. I'm not chasing so many deals for price matching/ couponing.

write your story

A little while back I was laying down for a rest, singing the words to "Write Your Story" by Francesca Battistelli in my head as I dozed off. I woke up within moments, with the words, "It's in the building experience that you grow," burning in my mind.

I wrote the words down, and forgot about them. Until today. When I felt a stirring in my heart.

But what am I building? Right now, I think I feel like I'm not building anything most of the time. That I'm just here, being. But I'm not. With most things, I believe we're almost always either building or tearing down. If we don't do what we need to maintain or build, things deteriorate. The problem with that deterioration is that it often goes unnoticed as things are slowly torn down. When we finally realize it, it ends up taking a lot more effort to rebuild than it would have to maintain or add on in the first place.

My life is full of things that are deteriorating before my eyes, and I think I've been choosing to ignore that fact, or cover it up somehow. My bitterness, my negative speech, and my weight are just some of the things I see causing deterioration. And I'm using my success in helping save our family money/ pay off loans as well as my "stress-induced nesting-like tendencies" to make myself feel better. [A friend posted the other day about building a life that feels good inside, not just looks good outside. yep.]

When instead I need to seek God's blueprint and restart the building process.

Keywords: need, restart, and process. It is certainly a need, but important for my type-A personality to not focus on the need for the end result, but to find a starting point, and seek the process. If nothing else, to keep the deterioration at bay. To truly seek God's will on who He needs me to be and how He needs me to live, right here, right now. To allow Him to "write His story on my heart."

I really started this post a couple months ago, and I think it's no coincidence the many ways I've realized God has "snuck in" and helped me repair the foundation for what He's growing my story into... Read more as I catch up with April and May in the next two weeks!

to be continued....