We had this beautiful puzzle we created many years ago. It was handcrafted and pieced snugly together with many facets of life, and portrayed a glossy sheen with brightness that came from the reflecting light of Jesus being a big part of the whole puzzle. The edges, for the most part, were in healthy shape from being taken care of with prayer and keeping God in the mist of the finishing spray to keep the puzzle looking good. There were only a couple of pieces where the top layer looked like they wanted to peel off from the weathering storms of handling it, but they remained in intact with lots of love.
There was a constant, faithful love that existed right in the middle of the puzzle. The bottom of the puzzle had some dirt stains on it from where many seeds of love were planted that took root and sprouted new blossoms. And your eyes were automatically drawn to the top of the puzzle where you could see blazing starbursts of love from all the memories of the past being stored in all the sheets of puffy clouds; and starburst sprinkles of new memories waiting to be formed. We had the most extraordinary puzzle that most families have themselves…one-of-a-kind and amazingly unique.
Our puzzle was suddenly destroyed one day; getting severely messed up in an unexpected tragedy. It took us a while to be able to pick it back up and even try to figure out how to piece it back together. There were many times we tried, but the pieces just didn’t fit. And many times falling apart just like our beautiful puzzle did. So many big pieces were missing that we were clueless as to how to even put it back together.
We allow God, through our hearts each day, to put our puzzle back together. It won’t happen overnight…as our beautiful, original puzzle took years to create.
We take each new day…and even if just one piece fits into our new puzzle…we snugly piece it in, allowing the piece to show a little speck of what the new picture looks like. We don’t know when the puzzle will be whole again, but we truly keep God and His love in all of it…believing our undesired new puzzle pieces are chosen from Him…and trusting they will each form a new piece of beautiful…making the puzzle again portraying a glossy sheen with brightness.
One thing for sure…we always look to those sheets of puffy clouds reflecting upon our past memories of what our beautiful, original puzzle looked and felt like…treasuring every single piece of it.