the mosaic of my life

Disclaimer: Today's post is somewhat a compilation of musings. Read at your own risk.

I've often struggled with with age-old question, "What do I want to be?" or "What should I do with my life?" I mean, like everyone DOESN'T ask themselves that question at some point in their life, right? But those questions have been swarming around in my head lately for some reason.

When I was little and someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always had an impressive answer. I wanted to be a Marine Biologist, and Archaelogist or a Paleontologist. Later it changed to wanting to be a teacher. Then, later it became that I wanted to work in Christian ministry. Like my wardrobe, my "grown up job" ideal has changed frequently.

I thought it was supposed to be fairly easy...you just make your career/job/life's work something that you are really good at or something that you really love or are passionate about. But it is SO not. For real. And I've even sought the counsel of wise people, close friends, business professionals and family members about this. What am I supposed to be? What am I supposed to do? What should I spend my life doing?

Depending on who you ask, you get a different answer. "April, you should be a singer." "April, I think you'd be a great teacher." Or, "April, you're so creative...you should be doing something with that!" I don't mean to sound conceited, but if I'm "so good" at so many things then how do I choose what I should be doing?

My life, I've realized, is very much like a mosaic. (and because I love a good analogy, I will expound upon this for you) I've got lots of stuff that I love to do or am really good at doing. Those are the little pieces in the mosaic. So you have the photography, music, literacy, administration, crafts, writing or even organizational little pieces that make up much of who I am. Sure, there are others. Some are probably bigger than others and some are probably miniscule compared to some of my bigger passions. But each one is an integral part of a larger and more complex picture. It's like those advertisements a few years ago that were tons of little pictures of stuff that formed a larger picture of something. To be quite honest, I don't know if I'll ever see the entire big picture that my mosaic pieces are forming...I'll leave that up to the CREATOR of the great mosaic to see that. I just have to trust that my little pieces are doing what they can to form the big picture.

And until then, I'll keep discovering more little pieces.