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From the time I was a child, I have always liked working on jigsaw puzzles. One of our family traditions was to receive a puzzle at Christmas and spend some of the cold January days putting it together. Ironically, my January of 1996 lasted a long fifteen months into March of 1997. During those months I put together four, two thousand piece puzzles; two, one thousand piece ones; and six, five hundred piece ones! That was approximately 13,000 pieces in all to sort and find the exact place for each piece. It was a daunting task, but contained many life lessons that proved to be a blessing for me.

I had an inner drive to “put them together”, take them apart and “put them together” again! My prayer life suffered during that broken hearted time because I could not clearly hear the Voice of God. I did a lot of thinking and sorting between my head and my heart in that season, however. It was as if I was searching for something…for answers. I spent many quiet hours of comforting solitude searching and watching for pieces, for patterns, for color, for shape. There were puzzles within puzzles, thoughts within thoughts. I stayed up late many long dark nights sitting with the puzzles…pondering, driven by the desire to see pieces and patterns come together and fit! I was consumed in watching the big picture come together before my eyes, knowing that it was made up of many bits and pieces, each one contributing to the overall whole.

I would work until I could no longer find a fit and then move on to another area of the puzzle, knowing I could come back to that which eluded me at the time. My family humored my love for puzzles. I probably seemed to them like an “old woman escaping reality”, only for me, the puzzles had a reality of their own. God was sorting, carefully turning over and over the little bits and pieces of information, belief, and concepts I had gathered throughout my life one by one. He was repairing and healing, reforming and fashioning a new understanding within me that was balanced; and when I emerged from this searching time, I no longer hung onto the extreme edges and fringes of faith in God.

A change of seasons was taking place in my life. I had already moved some ten years back from the child-rearing years of vitality into the mid-life bridge of transition. At age 50, I was beginning to cross into the golden years of reflection where I had the opportunity to see my life converge in every area and relation into one of godly balance and divine order. I had to relax….let the answers (pieces) come gently. So it was with the new rhythm developing in my life. The new rhythm emerged, and it was as steady as a heartbeat. It couldn’t be forced, but when I relaxed, trusted, and listened carefully, I could connect with it…this new rhythm of life.

I was learning more about love…God’s way, from His perspective and His viewpoint. God had spoken to me through the author, Melonie Beattie, “Loving isn’t for the faint. It is for the courageous.” For me, that meant being willing to continue to love even in the face of pain. Learning to be present in each moment and not escape and run and hide. In our living God, we can find and choose joy, a joy not dependent on outer circumstances, but one that come from the heart, a heart united with and committed to God and His way, His truth, and His life. This joy is deeper than surface happiness in “getting our own way” in most things.

Beattie’s words had taught me well. She had said to “Relax. Stop staring so hard at the details of the pattern. Look for the reflection of something else, and while you focus on that reflection, the real picture will emerge.” The process was similar to the new computer “dot art” in which one sees a confusing maze of dots and swirls; but upon focusing behind the surface at which one is looking, a depth, deeper into the picture, a new level begins to emerge showing a rich dimensional true picture and concept…like reality of the spirit kind, including hidden images and deeper insights!

Such thoughts and perspectives were swirling about me. Some of them that I “borrowed” from Beattie’s experience were painfully familiar to me in this unique juncture of life. They were like familiar friends or acquaintances of circumstances past; but at that time, they shined the light of God’s wisdom and truth along my own dimly lit way.

How is it that one can walk in the light as He is in the light and somehow still fall through a hole, a gap in the wall and suddenly find one’s self separated from light and clarity? It was as if I was swallowed up in the darkness of confusion and despair, a place of unfamiliarity, a place of hurt and pain. Yet I knew that I was where I was supposed to be…for the time being, in God’s providential care, and that I would come out on the other side. And by my 50th birthday in March of 1997, I came, once again, into the light and Presence of the Lord. I could “hear” His Voice once again, and how precious is was to my heart.

Looking unto Jesus,

Sandy