Puzzle me this...

I am going to be so good at being retired. I have the hobbies of most 80 year olds. I love word-searches, latchhooking, and puzzles, lots and lots of puzzles. Currently, I have 3 started all over my home. One on the dining room table (already missing a piece because I let my children help), one on my desk, and another on a fold-out table in my bedroom. I can (and do) spend hours on each one. Always telling myself, I'll go to sleep after just one more piece. 37 pieces later, I'm crawling into bed still picturing the edges fitting together, forming shapes and colors that eventually match the cover on the box. I wish my life was like this. Pieces that fit together, not forced or fragmented. Pieces that align, just like the box. But life isn't simple like puzzles - it's messy and complicated and never quite works out the way anyone plans.

Lately, my life doesn't even feel like the pieces are from the same box. But instead a stockpile of random pieces lost from other people's puzzles. And I keep trying to make the pieces fit. I feel like the lesson in this season of my life right now, is that it's not supposed to look like anything. Raising 4 adopted children with high social and emotional needs has no picture on the cover of the box. Surviving a global pandemic has no straight edges and corners. Writing and teaching and mothering - none of these things fit easily into each other, and often live in exact contradiction simultaneously.

I often daydream about the simplicity of retired life. Word-searches, latchhooking, and puzzles that always match the box. Only, I know there is no "simpler" time in life, only a different time, a different box, and different pieces.