Tangled Jewel

My mother loves buying me jewellery.  She loves jewellery and of course as her only daughter, it’s only normal that she expects me to love jewellery. I don’t love it but i don’t hate it either. I just like a simple, hassle-free life. On an ordinary day the most jewellery i have on is my wedding band  (but of course), a pair of earings (mind you sometimes it’s the same pair throughout the week) and a simple braclet that I’ve had for years with zirconia stones running around it (some of which have fallen off). So no, jewellery is really not my number one priority.

My mum loves buying me jewellery. She bought me 2 pairs of earings for my wedding (i only wore one), 2 bracelets (i only wore one) and two neckalces (i think i wore both (at seperate times of course) so at least i made an effort). I think my mum couldn’t decide which earings/bracelet/necklace to get me because each piece was beautiful. Or maybe it was because she knows how fussy i am so she needed to provide me with options- i dont know. All i know is that i love my mum and i want her to keep buying me jewellery.

Okay so now that i have established my indifference to jewellery i can continue…

On Tuesday i decided to wear a necklace to work. I dont know why but i did. I was going to wear a ‘salmon pink’ cardigan and I remembered i had a matching necklace. Now, as a person who is indifferent to jewellery you can imagine that i do not store my jewellery well so when i found the necklace i wanted to wear, it was tangled up with a bunch of other necklaces.

For some mysterious reason, i must have been very determined to wear this necklace because my normal reaction to the tangled mess would have been “Ah, forget this!”. However, despite the fact that i was running late for work i decided to sit on the bed and detangle the mess of about six or so necklaces just so that i could get wear that particular necklace. (maybe i was missing my mum).

If you have ever tried detangling a bunch of tangled necklaces you will know that it is not something you can rush through (lest you get them even more tangled). You have to work slowly and carefully, ensuring that you do not destroy the necklaces. You have to be patient.

So as i sat there slowly and carefully seperating my necklaces, it occured to me that this is exactly what God does with our lives. Each of us has a specific God-given purpose to fulfil, which He has placed inside of us. We are to discover what this purpose is but most times in our journey of life, as we are trying to discover what this purpose is we get tangled up. We get tangled up with looking for love in all the wrong places – with all the wrong people, getting hurt along the way, when all along the One who loved us first has always been there. We get tangled up living a life of lies, piling up debt and tossing away our self-esteem, trying to be people we are not because of the ‘perfect lives’ we see on the media (traditional and social media).

When we reach that place of being a tangled mess and the mess finally breaks us down to the realisation that all we really needed was God (duh!), what does He do? He gently picks us up and slowly and oh-so carefully begins to detangle us from the mess. He untangles us from self-loathing and frees us from low self-esteem. He untangles us from our fake lives and the people that are not meant to grow with us by showing us what we truly need to live a fulfilled life.  He untangles us from unrighteousness and sickness and pain and fills us wth love, joy and peace. He does not stop working on us and in us.

Its not an easy job and it’s not a job that can be rushed. Sometimes even during this process it looks like the tangled mess is worse than when He first began but worry not – He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it. Nothing is impossible for God- there is no mess He cannot fix.

A tangled jewel is still a jewel after all.

Love,

MrsD