Falling apart or falling into place, your choice

​Your world's not falling apart it's falling into place.

How does one know that?

Well, one doesn't know that. One decides it.

I have gone through many periods in my life when I was sure my life was falling apart. Never more intensely, I'm sure, than when I went through my divorce.

It's not like I woke up every morning post-divorce and declared, my world is falling apart. But something in me believed that without saying it.

My whole being and mindset was dominated by fear and anxiety and helplessness. I found myself going through the motions of life, constantly dwelling on what had happened, sure that whatever I was about to do next would only make things worse.

So I simply went through the motions.

I don't know exactly when that all changed. I don't know what day it was when I decided my world's not falling apart but falling into place. But I do know I made that shift.

I started spending a lot of time writing and reflecting on how the past challenges of my life were making me a stronger and best version yet of myself.

I started spending a lot of time practicing gratitude. One way to remind yourself that your world isn't falling apart is to spend time counting the ways it's all together.

I started spending a lot of time digging for the meaning in what I'd experienced in life. Experienced in my childhood and a life of broken relationships and how it all contributed to my contributions to a broken marriage.

I started connecting the dots of my life; that can look a lot more like a world coming together than one falling apart.

When we reflect back on our lives, and in my case when we write about it, we can often see how life has been building something out of us and not plotting ways to destroy us. Our challenges and our resilience start to look like puzzle pieces fitting together and not puzzle pieces strewn across the living room floor.

But we get to decide. A puzzle coming together or a puzzle strewn?

Sometimes life feels like it's falling apart. And I'm here to tell you it can come to feel that way your whole stinking life.

If you let it.

It can feel that way all the way up to the moment when you decide, my world isn't falling apart, it's falling into place.

I will never celebrate my divorce. Too much damage was done to ever get me to a place of saying that was a good thing. But I will always be grateful for the opportunity divorce gave me to once and for all decide, I'm living a life falling into place and not in a world that's falling apart.

I will always celebrate the me who has found his voice, who has found his true self, who has deepened his faith in God and become more committed than I ever could have become to having healthy relationships with my sons.

And in doing so, opened the door to having healthy relationships with others.

If you feel like your world is falling apart today, I see you. I get it. And it's far from my place to suggest to you that it's not falling apart.

But I do want to lovingly ask you to consider looking at it through a different lens. Even if it's just a peek. Just a peek at the possibility your world is falling into place.

It's easy to look at those puzzle pieces strewn all over the place and believe, my world is a mess. But just know, in those pieces is the possibility of a life put back together. Better than ever. It just requires of us to start picking those pieces up and connecting the dots.

And you never know, even in the most fallen apart world, connect enough dots and one day you may see a puzzle falling into place, a life coming together.

And you do never really know, that completed puzzle, it may just be your first glimpse at the real you.