Puzzle Peace

Last July, after finishing a puzzle for a friend, I wrote: I’ve heard of a wide variety of prayer groups. Of quilting groups, crocheting and knitting groups, blanket-making groups, and others. Yet I’ve never heard of a puzzle group. But why not? Why not choose a specific puzzle for someone who needs prayer—something that holds meaning for the future recipient or something generic if the intended recipient is unknown—and pray for that person with every piece placed? Little did I know that nine months later, I would present a puzzle to someone who indeed needed prayer…and that that puzzle would be a life-affirming reminder of God’s ever-steady presence and love.

Thanks to Barnes and Nobles’ after Christmas sale, my mom and I had a brand new puzzle to work on during our many snow days at the beginning of the year. As we began to work on the puzzle and I realized what we were putting together, I decided for whom we were working and shifted my puzzle making thoughts not only to properly sorting the pieces for puzzle putting together ease but also to praying for my friend.

After many hours of work (and prayer), the most elaborate puzzle-piece organization of our lives, and many celebratory high-fives, my mom and I finished the puzzle and attempted to glue it together—four times. After the fourth glue attempt, we threw up our hands in glue surrender and moved the puzzle out of the family room to a place where it would not be damaged. There it sat for almost three months…until last week.

Each night last week, I fell asleep to the prayer, “God help me remember to take the puzzle to work tomorrow.” Each morning, I’d get half way to school and realize that the puzzle was still at home. On Friday morning, as I got into my car, I thought, “Lunch. Owe money. Will owe more money today. Wallet. I don’t have my wallet,” so I went back into the house to get my wallet. Then I thought, “Puzzle. I should get the puzzle.” So I got the puzzle. [Yes. I think in incomplete sentences in the morning :-).]

I modge-podged the puzzle in B’s room between two of my classes. I let it dry. I left the puzzle for my friend at the end of lunch and then I went to teach Kindergarten. Along with the puzzle, I left a note: “You are important. And your work is too. Love, Dee. PS: My mom and I put this puzzle together for you. I prayed for you with each piece I placed.”

As my Kindergarteners danced, I answered a phone call of thanks. With much noise-filtering concentration and the hope that my students wouldn’t hurt themselves in their last hour before Spring Break, I heard my friend share how the puzzle had reached her at just the right time—at the end of a very difficult week—in a moment when life and work needed to be affirmed through what she took as a reminder of God’s sovereignty and control. I listened in amazement…and I smiled…

Yesterday at church, my pastor said that God’s grace and peace are alive and working and that God’s spirit is moving, always moving, toward hope and redemption…

The puzzle creator could have never made the puzzle. Barnes and Noble could have not placed it on clearance. My mom could have decided not to buy it. She could have chosen another puzzle to complete over the snow days or she could have not chosen not to do one at all. The puzzle could have taken the puzzle glue on our first four attempts at permanently piecing it together. I could have seen my friend using modge-podge before last week and I could have had the idea to sneakily borrow it from her so that I could glue her puzzle long before last week. God could have more directly answered my night-time prayers every morning last week and I could have given my friend that puzzle on another day at another time and I have no doubt that she would have loved it.

But instead, every piece of this story’s puzzle—pun intended—came together at just the right moment and transformed individual events from meaningful to life-changing.

Is this God’s working and moving toward grace, peace, hope, and redemption or what?!

And to think…God chooses us to be part.