Boy, was I wrong. I had one of the most beautiful moments in my faith walk as a young man got up to paint. His work on that blank canvas began to parallel my life in so many ways.
At first, the brush strokes were confusing, sometimes even kinda ugly. Ooooh, but then, I began to see something wonderful emerging from what really resembled, well, a mess.
But here's where my eye for the beautiful collided with the eye of the artist. Just when I thought the picture was amazingly complete, that dude was reaching for more paint. No!!! Don't do that...it's good. Don't mess with it.
He did it anyway.
And he totally knew what he was doing. With each new stroke of color, whether I liked the color or not, this painting became more beautiful, more alive...it was breathtaking & completely unexpected.
Sounds like this life that God has been weaving together. From my perspective, it has seemed a mess at times. But for the most part, it seems just fine.
And then He weaves a new thread. Oh, my heart is so full.
But He wasn't done yet. Another dimension, another thread.
Oh, how the Lord has blessed my life. 
And then He brought us a son. How wonderful. We are complete. It is good.
But He chose to weave more threads into this tapestry.
And then He began weaving threads that threatened to break my heart. Sometimes I felt completely tangled & wondered what was happening. I think He was breaking my heart to change the pattern of my tapestry, which was really never mine to begin with.
But this new pattern & tangled threads actually strengthened the fabric of this tapestry...His tapestry.
But He still was not finished.
And when it seemed that we certainly couldn't hope for anything more beautiful out of this tapestry, the great Artist has even more.
I've realized that this journey of God weaving the threads of my life, my faith, my marriage, my family, & my friendships into something of beauty is an ongoing process. There are knots, there are broken threads, there are some that go together in ways I never would have expected, but they are all working together. The term "beauty from ashes" has taken on new meaning as He continues the work with a perspective that is beyond me. I don't know what things will look like tomorrow, next year, or twenty years from now, but I look forward in hopeful expectancy of what He will do with each thread & every brush stroke.
