“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” – Jeremiah 29:11-13 NIV
“Seek the Lord with all of my heart,” I think quietly, as I ponder the details of my vivid dream which has me awake in the middle of the night once again.
I am a dreamer, you see, and I have been my whole life. I dream so clearly that I can taste, smell, hear and feel everything around me in vivid color, which I now know isn’t a super common thing. Dreaming as I do is a blessing and a gift, but I didn’t always feel that way. Sometimes the dreams are prophetic, sometimes they are scary, sometimes they are chaotic, and sometimes they are stressful, but having an active dream life feels a bit like being awake all night (but feeling fairly rested in the morning) and not fully remembering all the places you went or the things you did through the night. Maybe it feels similar to how someone with dementia might feel if they are extremely mobile, with free access to amusement parks and plane rides?
My dreams sometimes run parallel to my life experiences, like the one that I just woke up from. In my dream, I was putting together a child’s cardboard puzzle of a map of the United States under a dining room table as a woman that I was visiting, who later transformed into my mother, was in the kitchen preparing a meal for my unexpected visit. I think that I was trying to be a helpful guest and friend as I tidied up, but maybe I was also remembering my childhood self. In my dream, a screaming match ensued between this woman and her adult daughter, as the daughter informed her that she was not going to be around for supper because she was going to take her father on an outing. The woman was angry because she had been working hard all day as her husband had laid in bed, saying that he felt ill, and now she would be entertaining a guest all on her own.
Oh, how I can relate to this woman.
I’m going to pause there, because my mind is trying to put together the pieces of memories from my own life’s journey, plus the words of Jeremiah 29:11-13 are being highlighted in my spirit like a key that can unlock my healing. “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.” I let the words soak into my mind like my body soaking in a hot bath.
Did God really have plans to prosper me and not to harm me throughout my life in homes where I didn’t feel safe?
Putting together the pieces of a simple puzzle to be helpful as I stayed out of the way… how often I had quietly performed tasks like this in my lifetime. I realize now, though, that rarely was I the one who dumped the puzzle pieces out on the floor just to walk away from the mess. I felt like my purpose was to be the one to quietly pick up the pieces and make the home as peaceful as possible, but was it? Maybe it was, but my growing up years were far from peaceful in a home of unhealthy communication patterns, traumas and addictions, and then history repeated itself as I left home, married young, and began a family of my own.
I knew no other way to be. Stay quiet. Don’t draw attention. Put the puzzle pieces together. Pursue peace.
Peace never stayed in the air for very long in my life, and the puzzles never stayed completed either, but I know that I tried to put the pieces together the best that I knew how… quietly, meticulously, piece by piece. “Call on me and I will listen to you,” Holy Spirit had guided me throughout my life. “If only I can complete the puzzle, there will be peace here,” I would think. AND YET, there seemed to always be new puzzles dumped out, pieces scattered and parts of old puzzles left unfinished. There were a few times in my life that I recall anger within me causing me to symbolically dump the puzzle on the ground and walk away, but most of the time I would quietly sit down and pick up the pieces scattered by everyone else. This was my purpose, I thought, and the only way to find peace.
“God? Do you see me? Do you hear me? Will this ever end? Will the pieces ever come together and stay together?”
Not everything in life is a puzzle, of course, but the pieces are scattered about regardless, and the goal of finding peace remains deep within all of us. The puzzle dumper, chaos creator, sneaky mess maker, and home disrupter lives among us. They are the spiritual entities at work on earth who work against God and peace because they want the attention for themselves. It’s no wonder I was never able to get all the puzzles put together neatly and nicely and get them to stay together!
The meddling demons will never allow the puzzles to be completed as long as they are given access to them, and they certainly didn’t want me to realize that God had created me for a purpose greater than quietly picking up the pieces every time that they would cause them to be dumped on the floor. God had bigger plans for my life, but I had to reach the end to realize it. I had to reach the end… of my understanding, of my abilities, of my wits, and of my rope… before I laid myself down and fully surrendered to God’s purpose and plan for me.
The 29th chapter in Jeremiah continues in verse 14 with this: “I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”
Just as the Israelites were led out of captivity, I was led out of the only life that I knew by the Lord I had seeked with my whole heart. I no longer spend my days picking up puzzle pieces as people fight around me. Or do I? One thing that I know for sure is that there is a peace within me that has never been so prominent, so full, and so complete, and I no longer feel the need to quietly sit under the table and pick up the pieces. I am no longer afraid to live and walk out among the storms of disagreements and the chaos in the world around me. Peace goes with me with every step I take, and my confidence is in the Lord’s love for me as I live in the gratitude of knowing that he has freed me from captivity and brought me back to him.
Jesus puts together all of the puzzle pieces of peace, so I no longer have to. I am free to truly live!