Archive for September 2011
Why “the solution”?
Posted on: September 1, 2011
This should have been my first post. I meant it to be. Honest. But I typed it into the “About” page. In the middle of the night, I realized what I’d done, and thought, “Hmmm. I better go change that around in the morning” – only to find that it had gotten lost while I navigated around in the previous night’s attempts at figuring this thing out. 😦 So, I’ll have to attempt to reconstruct. Ah, the learning curve!
One of the quotes I have on my study wall says, “To most people, solutions are answers. To chemists, solutions are things that are all mixed up.” The older I get, the more I realize how much I resemble both of those definitions. With 51 years of life, virtually all of it as a believer (since I don’t remember ever NOT believing), 29 years of marriage, 26 years of parenting, 22 years of homeschooling, and almost 2 years of grandparenting under my belt, there are plenty of questions about life and parenting and relationships that I feel reasonably certain that I have some handle on and perhaps even, by God’s grace, wisdom to share. However, with all that experience, I also run into more and more questions that lead me to …. more and more questions, leaving me befuddled and confoozled and not always sure which way is up.
Life itself is like those definitions. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it’s a confusion, and sometimes it seems to be somehow both at the same time! I am trying to learn to accept those contradictions, even to embrace them, rather than trying to force life to be understandable. So, the point of this blog will be exploring life’s solutions – constants and conundrums, mysteries and muddles, ponderings and pronouncements. Off we go!
It’s a puzzlement!
Posted on: September 1, 2011
I love jigsaw puzzles. My whole family does, in fact; the more challenging the better! One of my favorite ones had the identical image printed on both sides – with one side rotated a quarter turn! Now, THAT was fun. We’d get little sections of the picture put together, only to find that they wouldn’t fit with the rest of what we had together; we’d have to turn it over before we could put it in place. Or we’d need to find a particular connecting piece, and search and search for it, almost concluding that it must have gotten lost, only to flip a piece over and – voila! – it was easy to find once it was right side up. I have figured out that life is a lot like that puzzle!
I’ll think I’ve gotten something all figured out, neat and tidy and tied with a ribbon, only to find that it doesn’t seem to quite fit in with the rest of reality; not until God comes and turns it all topsy-turvey does it finally fit. Or I search and search for something I think I’m missing, searching to the point of desperation sometimes, only to find that the answer was in front of me all the time – I just hadn’t been looking at it from the right angle. God has promised that He DOES have all the pieces, none are missing; and He promises that they all FIT, too. The truth is, the picture is so vast that I will only ever be able to see a small section of it. I’m learning to deal with just the piece directly in front of me, and to leave the rest of the puzzle in His more-than-capable hands.
the susie solution 