"Thou tellest my wanderings: put Thou my tears into Thy bottle: are they not in thy book?" Psalm 56:8
I like this concept. Because, well, I'm not really sure where I'm going sometimes. Like this:
This verse shows that all the time I spent sojourning in the barren desert of consequences or the tangled forest of my bad decisions is not wasted. All the (figurative) tears that I cried while seeking God through the fallout of my parents' divorce and my subsequent reacquaintance with honesty were like bricks in my wall. God truly works "all things together for good" (Romans 8:28). God was in every detail. Every little seemingly minute part of my "desert experience" was like a thread that God was weaving into the tapestry of my life. This might sound poetic and flowery, full of allusion and parallel, but consider this:
"I will cry unto God most high; unto God that performeth all things for me" (Psalm 57:2 emphasis mine) So, that's called proof-texting—it's considered logically lowbrow to do that whether the debate is religious or not, but I don't care. And here's another thing: God is doing this for everyone. You, me, that person over there. God is recording their story, putting their wanderings into his book. Threading His narrative through every paragraph, sentence. Word.
Did you know He even went one further? "Behold (LOOK!), I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me." (Isaiah 49:16) Your name is written, carved (that's one connotation of graven) into God's hands. "Ever before Him". So then, if my "walls are continually before" Him, like it says, and "God...performeth all things for me", does this mean that God is the one putting the bricks of hardship into my wall? Is this too much free association? At least it's free...
Only God can take our mistakes and make them beautiful. Give us beauty for ashes (Isaiah 61:3). The oil of gladness (Hebrews 1:9; Jesus, sure but why not us?). Where we see infinite sand or trees instead of forest, God sees glass (sand+fire=glass, for bottles, for tears you understand) and trees for paper to record our wanderings.
Here's my point. This is our life, warts and all. Our one chance in existence to find Jesus and find (from God) why we were put here before we go back from whence we came. God is wholly economical, and all of our mistakes, our victories, our tears, our jokes, all our free associations are like bricks in the wall around the city that is us. Don't worry about it.