In a recent Facebook Live Car Chat with yours truly, I shared some of my thoughts about how are lives are like puzzles. With pieces spread out all over and purposely trying to make something of 'nothing', truly becomes a challenge.
Like puzzle pieces, there are different shapes and sizes. Some days, we know exactly where the pieces go. Other days if feels like we have pieces to a different puzzle.
Let me share some of my recent experiences to shed some light on how this applies to me, and how it can apply to you as well.
Moving to Arizona was a hard decision but an easy process. Jeremy and I had been toiling around the idea for months before we made the leap to move. We loved everything about Utah, expect one thing. But that ONE thing wasn't enough to make us feel like it was time to move. That one thing was growth.
We were comfortable in Utah. We were familiar with its surroundings, people, lifestyle, culture, climate, activities, etc. We had routines, friendships that were solid, activities that were fun and engaging, vacations routinely placed in our agenda to give us a change of scenery but not a change of our love for Utah. We knew where the best places to hike, eat out, got for a run, and all around just feel comfortable. The kids had their activities, I had an amazing career starting my own business training clients at a local fitness studio, we had friends that were there for us and supported us in our lifestyle choices. Life was Good!
Yet moving to Arizona felt like the right 'move' for our family. It promised adventure, growth, change and excitement. We literally had to start over with EVERYTHING. Friends, community, culture, weather, environment, activities, EVERYTHING! WE knew it would be hard, but not quite as hard as it has been.
Now to tie in the puzzle pieces. Utah's puzzle pieces were mostly all easily connected. There were some pieces that seemed out of place, like health challenges, addiction recovery and growing 4 humans and try and be super mom. Looking back, I laugh at what we thought was hard at that time. Those pieces seemed big and easy to see how they were going to lead to our growth and the overall beautiful picture of our life.
Now as a side note. While I believe that we are creating one large puzzle called life, I do believe that there are little puzzles within each of the bigger puzzle. Moving from Utah felt like we had completed a smaller puzzle and moving onto the next.
Since moving, most of the puzzle pieces that we have come across have been super tiny and sometimes ugly colors and hard to find their places. We have tried countlessly looking over all the pieces and thinking that we might have extra pieces or the wrong pieces all together.
Yet piece by piece, we are seeing the bigger picture. Starting over is HARD! Making new friends can be scary, building a business in a new area is challenging, being social right now is difficult. Each small piece is starting to find its place in our puzzle. There's some light that is slowly shining in our darkness.
I don't, nor did I expect, to see the whole picture from beginning to end, but sometimes the idea of that sounds pretty nice. Although, it wouldn't be as rewarding to see the light at the end of the tunnel from the other side, unless it was just to know that it's there to start with.
We have all the puzzle pieces spread out on our 'tables' and we're slowly putting together our puzzle.
Hopefully it's the same picture that's on the front of the box.
