I just remembered this essay I wrote about a year and a half ago in Connecticut and thought it deserved an easily accessible home before I forgot about it forever. Enjoy!
Once, while my son was working on a puzzle, he asked me how the puzzle makers knew what to put on each puzzle piece so the picture would form. I explained that the picture came first and that the pieces were just cut from a preexisting image.
At times, I have treated life as a preexisting image cut into puzzle pieces that have to go in the correct place. This idea was reinforced by a letter from a missionary in which he suggested that God "micromanaged" our lives so that we would be standing in the right spot to talk to the right person. I extrapolated that He would micromanage further so we would marry the right person, live in the right places, and meet the right people.
But with this mindset comes pressure to do things exactly right. After all, when working on an intricate puzzle, the end result can be spectacular, but you have to have all the pieces. If a toddler comes along and bends or hides a piece, well, that's that. It’s forever incomplete. And so it might go in life. If you fail to move to the right place or meet the right people, the puzzle will have a lot of gaps. What then? I trusted the Atonement to fill in those gaps, but at the same time it seemed strange for Christ to atone for futures that never happened but should have.
It was in the midst of these queries that my son and I discovered Bob Ross on YouTube. For years he starred in the PBS show “The Joy of Painting” wherein he would demonstrate how to paint scenes in nature. Over the half hour episode, I would watch in awe as his series of almost haphazard brushstrokes culminated in a coherent, beautiful scene. Although this style is difficult for amateurs, it is forgiving. He reminded the viewer that we don’t make mistakes -- we have happy accidents. The beauty comes from the overall picture, not the details.
This, I realized, was a better description of the God I had interacted with. Rather than being micromanaged, my life had been painted in broad brushstrokes, and I felt like I had received little detailed instruction about how to proceed. I still thought in puzzle mode, however, and I was impatient at the pile of pieces I had no guidance for.
One morning as my husband and I were deciding where to live the next year, I prayed that I could serve someone. But it was not a humble prayer as much as it was a demand of God, a test that He cared enough to put me in the right place. I then spent the morning at the park with friends and mostly forgot about the prayer. On the way back, I suddenly felt the desire to see if I could get home more quickly with a different route. I found that this instead slowed me down by a few minutes. When I was a mile from home, I came up to a stoplight behind a car that had stalled and instantly recognized it. A friend who had been with us at the park had gotten ahead thanks to my detour, and now her car had broken down. I hurried to a nearby parking lot and then helped her get her car to the same parking lot so we could jumpstart her car using mine. It was unsuccessful, and all I could credit myself for was giving her a ride so she didn’t have to walk home with her kids. Nonetheless, I felt that my prayer was answered. God had clearly used my desire to put me in the right place, .
But this narrative felt incomplete. Surely God had not intentionally made her car break down simply so I could have a faith-promoting story. If her car’s breakdown was a puzzle piece, it wasn’t a pretty one.
However, if it was just one brushstroke in a larger image, then that changed the meaning of the story. It wasn’t God’s design nor His negligence that caused the car problems. It was just something that happened as part of the painting. Perhaps my arrival was part of another brushstroke painted to improve her day, a happy accident to compensate for the less happy accident.
Maybe my life canvas was like that -- a series of incidents and accidents that could be transformed into something beautiful with God’s help. There was always a way for Christ to cover my mistakes with fresh paint and renewed vision. Whether my painting ended up as an inviting campfire in the woods or a cabin in the mountains, if I let God add His artistry to my amateur attempts, it would always be good.
Once, while my son was working on a puzzle, he asked me how the puzzle makers knew what to put on each puzzle piece so the picture would form. I explained that the picture came first and that the pieces were just cut from a preexisting image.
At times, I have treated life as a preexisting image cut into puzzle pieces that have to go in the correct place. This idea was reinforced by a letter from a missionary in which he suggested that God "micromanaged" our lives so that we would be standing in the right spot to talk to the right person. I extrapolated that He would micromanage further so we would marry the right person, live in the right places, and meet the right people.
But with this mindset comes pressure to do things exactly right. After all, when working on an intricate puzzle, the end result can be spectacular, but you have to have all the pieces. If a toddler comes along and bends or hides a piece, well, that's that. It’s forever incomplete. And so it might go in life. If you fail to move to the right place or meet the right people, the puzzle will have a lot of gaps. What then? I trusted the Atonement to fill in those gaps, but at the same time it seemed strange for Christ to atone for futures that never happened but should have.
It was in the midst of these queries that my son and I discovered Bob Ross on YouTube. For years he starred in the PBS show “The Joy of Painting” wherein he would demonstrate how to paint scenes in nature. Over the half hour episode, I would watch in awe as his series of almost haphazard brushstrokes culminated in a coherent, beautiful scene. Although this style is difficult for amateurs, it is forgiving. He reminded the viewer that we don’t make mistakes -- we have happy accidents. The beauty comes from the overall picture, not the details.
This, I realized, was a better description of the God I had interacted with. Rather than being micromanaged, my life had been painted in broad brushstrokes, and I felt like I had received little detailed instruction about how to proceed. I still thought in puzzle mode, however, and I was impatient at the pile of pieces I had no guidance for.
One morning as my husband and I were deciding where to live the next year, I prayed that I could serve someone. But it was not a humble prayer as much as it was a demand of God, a test that He cared enough to put me in the right place. I then spent the morning at the park with friends and mostly forgot about the prayer. On the way back, I suddenly felt the desire to see if I could get home more quickly with a different route. I found that this instead slowed me down by a few minutes. When I was a mile from home, I came up to a stoplight behind a car that had stalled and instantly recognized it. A friend who had been with us at the park had gotten ahead thanks to my detour, and now her car had broken down. I hurried to a nearby parking lot and then helped her get her car to the same parking lot so we could jumpstart her car using mine. It was unsuccessful, and all I could credit myself for was giving her a ride so she didn’t have to walk home with her kids. Nonetheless, I felt that my prayer was answered. God had clearly used my desire to put me in the right place, .
But this narrative felt incomplete. Surely God had not intentionally made her car break down simply so I could have a faith-promoting story. If her car’s breakdown was a puzzle piece, it wasn’t a pretty one.
However, if it was just one brushstroke in a larger image, then that changed the meaning of the story. It wasn’t God’s design nor His negligence that caused the car problems. It was just something that happened as part of the painting. Perhaps my arrival was part of another brushstroke painted to improve her day, a happy accident to compensate for the less happy accident.
Maybe my life canvas was like that -- a series of incidents and accidents that could be transformed into something beautiful with God’s help. There was always a way for Christ to cover my mistakes with fresh paint and renewed vision. Whether my painting ended up as an inviting campfire in the woods or a cabin in the mountains, if I let God add His artistry to my amateur attempts, it would always be good.
So good!!!! I love this. Happy little trees!! I really like the praying that uhhhh could serve someone idea. I wish I had done that during hard decisions! (But now that is just a brushstroke!)
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