- nicole
- Jun 2
- 4 min read
Sometimes it only takes one piece...to help the picture make sense.
Have you ever looked back on a season of your life and realized you couldn't see what was happening while you were living it?
At the time, it felt confusing.
Maybe even unfair.
Nothing seemed to make sense.
But years later, you look back and think:
"Oh......now I see."
Sometimes life can be a little like putting together a puzzle.
When you first open the box, all you see are scattered pieces.
Some seem important.
Some seem insignificant.
Some don't appear to fit anywhere at all and you want to cram everything back in the box and pretend you never even opened it.
Yet, you carry on, stare at a single piece and have no idea where it belongs.
This reminds me of what I say often, "we don't know, what we don't know."
And, as time passes, and with God's grace, more pieces begin to connect.
The picture slowly starts to emerge.
Life unfolds much the same way.
We rarely get the full picture when we're living through something.
We only see the piece directly in front of us.
The news from the veterinarian
The job we didn't get.
The relationship that ended.
The move we didn't want to make.
The diagnosis.
The loss.
The disappointment.
The unexpected detour.
And in those moments, it's easy to ask:
"Why is this happening?" (insert your own appropriate language here)
Sometimes we spend months ~ or years ~ trying to make sense of a piece that simply doesn't fit anywhere we can see.
Then something interesting happens.
Time passes.
Perspective grows.
More pieces connect.
The picture begins to reveal itself.
And often, what once felt like an ending becomes a beginning.
What felt like rejection becomes redirection.
What felt like loss creates space for something we never could have imagined.
Not because the difficult parts weren't painful.
God knows they were.....they are....
Life was quietly fitting together pieces we couldn't yet see.
I've also noticed that life has a way of revealing people.
The people we expected to show up sometimes don't.
And if we're honest, that can hurt.
But then there are the unexpected people.
The ones who send a text.
The ones who remember.
The ones who check in.
The ones who listen.
The ones who quietly stand beside us when life gets hard.
Sometimes life reveals that our greatest sources of support come from places we never expected.
And sometimes it reveals our own strength.
The strength we didn't know we had until life asked us to use it.
The courage to keep going.
The resilience to begin again.
The grace to soften instead of harden.
The ability to hold both heartbreak and hope at the same time.
Maybe that's why I've become less interested in having all the answers.
Because most of the answers don't arrive when we want them.
They arrive when enough pieces have come together for us to see a little more of the picture.
I've learned that some of life's greatest lessons are only visible in the rearview mirror.
Not because we weren't paying attention.
But because the lesson itself was still unfolding.
And perhaps that's the invitation.
To trust that we don't need to understand everything right now.
To trust that life is still revealing what we need to know.
One piece at a time.
One experience at a time.
One season at a time.
As I've reflected on this lately, I've realized that healing often works the same way.
We don't heal all at once.
We don't suddenly become the person we're meant to be.
We grow through small moments of awareness, grace, and intention.
The pieces come together slowly.
And maybe that's why the work I'm creating inside Healing Habits feels so meaningful to me.
Not because it promises quick answers.
But because it creates space for reflection, awareness, and small shifts that support us while life, our picture, continues to unfold.
Because healing, like life, isn't about having the whole picture.
It's about trusting the next step.
Looking back, there are countless moments in my life that make sense now that never made sense then.
And I suspect there are moments happening today that I won't fully understand until years from now.
Maybe that's true for you, too.
Until then, perhaps our job isn't to force the picture to appear.
Perhaps our job is simply to trust that the pieces we're holding today ~ even the ones that don't seem to fit ~ are part of a larger story still unfolding.
One piece at a time.
One experience at a time.
One season at a time.
And maybe that's where grace lives.
Not in having all the answers.
But in trusting that the picture is still being revealed.
Reflection
Can you think of a season in your life that didn't make sense at the time ~ but later revealed something important you couldn't see before? Comment below💗🧩
