When I was younger, I loved my Rubik’s Cube! I was great at mixing up the colored squares. Sometimes I could even get a line or two of one color back after much twisting and turning of the cube. However, by the end of my fascination with the Rubik’s Cube, it sat on a shelf gathering dust, its small colored squares peeling off. In my desire to get the cube back to its original pristine color-coded glory, I had pulled all of the stickers off. Despite numerous rubbings of my small fingers, the squares never quite stuck.
I still live my life in this way. When I feel like everything is out of sorts and not going according to plan, I throw patience out the window! I want to pull life’s colored squares off one by one, in order to put them back into the order they should be in!
Our missionary can solve any Rubik’s Cube in less than ten minutes and he’s working on getting that time even lower. (I’m still at the pulling off sticker phase.)
Last week, he shared an insight into solving a Rubik’s Cube.
This is what the cube looks like before you’re almost done. Looks pretty solved and in order, right?
But then you do an algorithm that makes the cube look like this?!?
Looks totally ruined, right? But yet, if you perform just a couple more moves, it’s all solved!
Sometimes, we think that God is messing our lives up, and we don’t understand why He is, but yet, if we wait a little bit and allow Him to guide us, everything falls right into place!
I have had many experiences with life looking like everything is lining up as it should before a few twists causes me to question if I’ll ever get it straightened out!
One such experience was when our youngest daughter began school. Her enthusiasm for learning and desire to please the teacher brought home report after report of how well she was doing. “She is such a pleasure to have in class. So smart!”
Then life’s Rubik’s Cube twisted. We received back scores showing her falling further and further behind her peers. Over the summer, I tried re-teaching her, using a beginner’s reading program. I often left the room in frustration as she clearly did not understand. Despite her obvious trying, it was like her mind was a sieve and the information continued to leak out.
Another school year, another twist of the cube, and more testing. She continued to fall further behind. No answers, other than she had the potential to learn the material, she just wasn’t getting it.
So many, many tearful prayers, as we continued searching for answers. By the end of her third-grade year, she was barely reading at a preschool level and still confused letters and sounds. I was devastated and felt like a failure as a mother.
Here I am, a mother with a bachelor’s degree in English, and I can’t teach my daughter the basics of reading and writing. I gave my best efforts and it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough.
We continued to persevere and search for answers—as parents, that’s our job, right? To try to help our children move their dreams forward! Reading and writing are pretty necessary skills!
Finally (another twist of the cube), we received an answer: she was dyslexic. Not only dyslexic but severely so!
Because of this prognosis, we were able to get her instruction, specifically designed with the dyslexic brain in mind. She is still behind her peers, but she has gained great strides in the year since we’ve begun teaching her in a way her brain understands!
Her teachers love her determination and perseverance—skills she’s had to rely on during these years of trying and failing and trying again. They love her compassion for others who are on the outskirts of the crowd—another skill, as she knows what it’s like to be the odd man out.
To read more of Emlee Taylor’s Missionary Mom moments, click here.
You see, every single twist of this journey was necessary for our daughter to learn some really important life skills. And for her mother, myself, to learn patience and to trust the Lord’s timing.
The Lord knew His daughter, my daughter, would be better for these experiences.
The Lord also knew His daughter, myself, would be better for these experiences.
I hope I can remember the lesson of the Rubik’s Cube the next time life throws me an unexpected twist or turn: have patience and trust in the Lord.
Growing up all over the world gave Emlee Taylor an opportunity to see the incredible differences the Lord created in humanity; and even better, the passions we all share as members of the human race: love for family, faith, & a desire to make a difference.
Emlee lives life with passion—focusing her time now on raising four children and teaching them to recognize truth and to live true to that truth, regardless of others’ expectations. Emlee is passionately in love with her bestest friend and husband of more than 20 years.
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