Life Is A Puzzle

[This is going to be an update on where I am and what I’m doing, I promise… it’s just going to be a very long and thorough way of explaining it. So if you’re the impatient sort, just… bear with me.]

A man’s life is a puzzle

perpetually built,

Each day like a patch

in an ongoing quilt.

And it’s not just a picture,

it’s also a book:

You may find your own

if you sit back and look.

You’ve so many scraps

lying thither and yon

That have yet to fit

and have oft been foregone

But as you grow older

their patterns emerge

And if given time,

you’ll find many converge.

Every life is, in fact

a piece in its own right

In a much greater work

far too big for our sight

Though in ten thousand years

we will sit down and see

Not one scrap without purpose

or not meant to be.

                    ~

     I’ve known for years that there may be fewer expressions more true than the one which says, “Hindsight is 20-20.” However, what I’ve come to learn within the past decade is that while the expression is certainly 100% accurate, there is so much that it doesn’t describe about the experience of hindsight itself.

     As a student and connoisseur in the art of storytelling (aka: creative writing, film studies, and documentary broadcast), I tend to apply lessons from the lives of both characters and authors. Believing in the existence of God means believing in an author, which means believing in the existence of a power that could easily be unaffected by the course of this world if He didn’t bother emotionally and physically investing in it. It also means He knows exactly what I’m going to do all the time without necessarily forcing my actions (as C.S. Lewis may have said best in Mere Christianity.) But that’s perhaps a topic for another blog post. My current point in this matter is that a long time ago, I started viewing my life more like a story, and less like… well, life.

     Of course, the trick when watching a movie for the first time or reading a book that you haven’t read before… is that you’ve really no idea what’s going to happen. Life is the same way. Of course we all have suspicions and dreams about our futures, just as we try to predict the endings of brand-new novels or television shows.

     But it’s not until we come to the ending of a story that we start to understand how all of the past events in the plot were building blocks in some grand scheme that accomplished — hopefully — something incredible.

     Some viewers can tend to be more attentive than others. Moviegoers who put their thinking caps on and pay special mind to details may pick up on subtle hints and can figure out (or at least understand) the ending better than anybody else. Similarly, those who never bother to reflect on their lives will be those who feel (and perhaps are) the most lost. If you give yourself time to think, you will naturally think about yourself. And from that, you will start to think about what makes you… you.

     When given time to process the events around us, we also start wondering why we act the way we do towards said events. And this silent examination is where the everyone’s journey to self-identity (mine in particular, at least) begins. Before I graduated from high school, I had moved so many times that I had spent more hours than the average teenager by myself — and that time turned out to be quite valuable.

     Instead of spending every afternoon in a mall or some other adolescent hangout, I was reading and writing and journeying, both through fictional worlds and through my own mind. All of those hours let me process just what made me Rica. Every time I made new friends, I was allowed to re-invent myself and so I learned what traits I could rewrite in myself and which ones I would probably be stuck with.

     In fact, by the time I entered college I was able to tell others not only what my habits or personal tendencies were… but also at least one reason why I probably had them. I hate bikes because I’ve fallen off of them at least twice near running cars. I don’t mind snakes because I grew up watching the Crocodile Hunter and animals never bothered me. On and on the list goes.

     Realizing the logic in my own personality allowed me to perceive it in the events surrounding me… but that was difficult to really do until the summer of 2009, when I found Asbury University. Chances are if you and I have talked at all within the past five years, I’ve passed on the whole story with wild hand gestures and dramatic voices. So I’ll spare you the gushing about how I discovered the perfect college… though I may one day post the ‘extended edition’ for you to read in full. But I will say this about it:

     Have you ever worked on a puzzle for ages, and then suddenly you discover the one piece that seems to simply set everything into motion? It somehow allows you to look at the other pieces and turn them around, and then bam! That pile of rejected debris has taken shape and a huge chunk of the puzzle is done!

     That was Asbury for me. That university took the puzzle scraps of my life and made sense out of them. After years of yearning for "a place to belong" like so many other fictional heroes and heroines, I actually found one — and it even came with a soundtrack! (The music I was listening to on the day that I discovered Asbury seemed to herald in my destiny. I’m not exaggerating. I actually felt suspicious about how well my iPod was narrating my life as it happened… Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor?)

Making Sense of the Past 8 Months

     When I first arrived back in Kentucky after 10 weeks in New York City, I felt lost and worthless. After all, it had taken me three months to get so much as an interview with a Starbucks, let alone anywhere that might actually be relevant to my intended career of film and broadcasting. I wasn’t used to rejection or failure; in school I almost always got the scholarships I applied for, the grades that I worked for, or the summer jobs that I interviewed for. Yet here I was, supposedly ready for the real world but unable to get so much as a rejection letter from a Kentucky McDonalds — seriously, those guys still haven’t called me back… for which I’m admittedly a bit grateful.

     I didn’t blog for a long time because frankly I didn’t feel that there was anything to blog about… at least, nothing good. Not that I disliked living with my family, but there's such a negative stigma to it nowadays as opposed to older times when it was expected of a young single to stay with their family until marriage. Instead, I was supposed to feel like a failure for not getting my feet on the ground at first try. I was a college graduate living with my parents and looking for a job — any job — and feeling about as hopeless and stuck as I had as a junior when we moved to Kentucky in the first place. But now that several months have passed, my mind has been able to organize itself and give my latest journey some much-needed hindsight.

     I finally got a job waitressing in September, and discovered that my employers could legally get away with paying me $2.50 per hour because tips would supposedly cover the rest of my wage. And while I’d always enjoyed serving food at private events, working the evening shift in a place where employees smoked in the restrooms and stole tips from each other was not exactly a delight. I was desperate… and so when my mother mentioned that there was a tutoring position opening at the elementary school where she taught, I jumped on the idea in a heartbeat — even though my major had nothing to do with education.

     I interviewed for the job over the phone and was hired on the spot, finding myself more relieved and grateful to be a tutor than I ever thought possible… and looking back now, I can see that God had to make me desperate before I would think to apply to a position outside of my intended career.

     Working as a part-time tutor gave me much steadier hours and even steadier pay (which far-exceeded $2.50 per hour, I might add). I was able to spend my afternoons job-hunting, and I quickly fell in with my old employers at the local television station (with whom I had worked as a high-schooler in a film class). That way, I didn’t have to choose between a consistent paycheck and earning experience in my chosen field. I even started volunteering to run the tech booth at our new church, working with graphics and cameras on a weekly basis and serving other people with the skills that I had learned as an undergraduate. 

     On top of that, I was asked to contribute to a new collaborative blog (think "online magazine") that talks about popular mainstream fiction. I've been writing articles every Tuesday reviewing movies, recapping television episodes, and examining the production choices of upcoming films. The latest highlight of my life was when I reviewed The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson : he retweeted the link to his followers the same day, and posted it on his
website!

     Having a regular income finally gave me a chance to do what others only dream about. With no rent or living expenses to harangue me, I started to pay off my college loans. Granted, it was my grandmother who lent to me and so her interest policies were much less stringent, but I only have a month or two left before I've paid her back completely. The more I talk with other college graduates (some of them in their thirties and forties and above), the more special I realize that is.

     Not only that, but in October I decided that it was time to get rid of my acne, which had been plaguing me for over a decade despite whatever severe topical or antibiotic treatment any dermatologist could prescribe. If I wanted to be considered an adult and a competent one at that, I couldn’t walk around with breakouts plaguing me until I was thirty.

     I’d been considering the half-year pill known as Accutane — which was renown for skin treatment but also for risks of teenage depression — but hadn’t wanted to take it while in college or in an unfamiliar city like New York for fear of dampening or even ruining the experience. But with an unknown number of months to spend at home, I thought I might as well hunker down and take the pill with the best people available to keep an eye on my emotional stability: my family. (I am now in the final month of my treatment [depression-free, I might add], and my only regret is that I didn’t do this sooner!)

     But back to the rest of my current journey. I've learned just how valuable a Bible study with others (particularly in BSF International) really is. After growing up in a home where BSF was just another tedious extracurricular activity, Kentucky was the first state where we couldn't attend as regularly as we used to. We (and I) have managed, of course: still attending Sunday School and other weekly studies with our peers wherever we've been living.

     When I arrived home in September, I started reading a devotional book on my own time that would take me through the Bible in a year: by November, I had finished studying all four gospels and the Old Testament all the way through the life of Moses. I thought that I'd learned quite a bit, just working through the books by myself. But as it turns out, with only the four of us living in the house, our schedules were a lot more free and soon our family re-started attending BSF up in the nearest city, now that the hour commute wasn't as much of an obstacle as it had been in previous years. And what was BSF International's study this year? The Life of Moses.

     Not only was the study deeper and more fascinating than when I had done it on my own, but I started to see parallels between the studies and the experiences that I and my family were going through. We were learning how to trust God, to obey Him, to trust Him, and especially to follow wherever He leads despite how strange or frightening the experience may be.

     Because as it turns out, my return home wasn’t just for my own benefit. Whereas my youngest sister Jana would have otherwise been facing the school year alone (rather than surrounded by multiple rowdy siblings), I was around to keep her company in her rare moments of extroversion.

     And when my father suddenly accepted a new job in another county* (talk about following God wherever He leads!), I discovered that another reason (perhaps, dare I say, the main reason?) why I was home: to help my family prepare to move. Both of my parents already had their hands fairly full with their own jobs, and so my possession of just slightly more free time than them allowed me to pack boxes, clean rooms, and even film clips of the house to create a “For Sale” video! (It’s still in the works.)

     * You know, the funny thing is… for all of the years we’ve been living in this town, we haven’t been taking the normal highway exit to get to our house: we always go around the city and take the next exit because it's faster. Why is that funny? Because the exit that we always take… is named for the same city that my family is now about to move to. (You may cue the Twilight Zone theme song now…)

     Screenplays: making you obsess over obscure details of your life since 1903...

     Last month, school was canceled for over a week thanks to a pair of Snow-Pocalypses south of the Mason-Dixon line. The governor even declared a State of Emergency for Kentucky… no, seriously. Those snow days gave our family a miraculous amount of time to get everything packed. Amongst the possessions we unearthed was a 2,000-piece puzzle, which according to its box was a photograph of an Austrian castle. After a while I got into the habit of fiddling with it about once a day, just sorting the pieces and getting the border built up. At first I used the picture on the box as my guide, but after a while I stopped and just sorted the pieces by myself. Every now and then I would have a good day where a few key pieces could bring together whole chunks of the picture. Those were the best moments.

     We have an idea of what our lives are going to be or what we’d like them to be, yet in the end when events begin to fall into place, the picture ends up different than our expectations — but clearer, and cleaner. The more of the final product we see, the less we can imagine anything else.

     I never got to finish the puzzle before it was put away, but then again I hopefully have years of my life to go before my own picture is complete. Right now I just have glimpses and guesses, but the more I pray, the more grateful I am to receive each new addition to it. And the best part is, my life — when it’s complete — is part of another giant project in its own right. One day it will be interwoven and interlocked with everyone else’s puzzled lives to create a sizeless masterpiece.

So keep tabs on your puzzle

as its size increases;

Sometimes the connections

are in the small pieces.