We have a neighbor across the street from us who has become our friend.  When we stand at our kitchen sink, we can see into her living room, if her front door is open.  I sometimes see her sitting at her dining room table in the late evening, working puzzles, one after the other. 

One day, we went over to visit with her, and I sat down at the dining room table with her to work on a puzzle.  She explained she was working on some pieces she had found in a paper bag.  There was no picture, so she had no idea what she was creating, nor did she know if all the pieces were there.  I laughed but started trying to put some pieces together, without much success.  After about 15 minutes, she declared we should give up.  I reluctantly submitted while we moved to the living room to talk.  I understood her frustration and feeling that it was hopeless, yet, in a twisted sort of irony (for me, who does not like puzzle-working), I wanted to keep trying to work it.  Though, I knew it could be missing half the pieces, my heart was troubled just walking away from it, never to know what the picture might have been, or whether only a few pieces weren’t there.  I’m just that way, I suppose, unable to leave a “story” unfinished.  

I’ve come to realize that not all people see the need to pursue finishing the picture, whether in puzzle-working, watching a movie, reading a book, or in life’s puzzle.  One of my closest friends is this way, and it’s troubled me some, leaving me confused at times.  I’ve questioned whether there was something wrong with me, or was there something wrong with her? Of course, neither answer is yes.  We are simply different personalities, and God works in us differently.  This is all part of our individual puzzles that God fits together, eventually making us all one, just as He is One with the Spirit and the Son.  

We need friends of all types, and our friends need us.  I dearly love my friend who is content not to question and dig deep.  God has used her in my life, as He does so many of my friends.  Yet, it may always boggle my mind how she can just leave the questions unanswered.  I desire to learn from her and hope she can learn from me, as well.  

What would we do without friends?  Next to family, they are a huge force in all our lives; sometimes, they influence us more strongly than our families, for the good or the not so good.  Our relationships with friends comprise many pieces of our life puzzles.  

My first memories of friendship are of those who lived near me or who went to church with me.  These friends were mostly by default because they were there, not because I chose to be friends with them.  Those who lived near me were my playmates, and eventually, we went to school together.  At church, my friends were those who went to Sunday School and Vacation Bible School with me.  These friendships are where some of my first memories of hurt feelings originate.  The old adage that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words never hurt me” is just not true. 

I can still recall some of the hurtful words said to me by those friends in my neighborhood, being made fun of because of my weight, boys picking on me and my brother standing up for me (they were quite scared of him).  Yet, these were supposedly my friends.  Hmm… how they shaped some of my puzzle pieces… 

One of my best memories of those early years, and friendship, was my brother’s best friend, who also became my friend.  He actually was my first crush, when I was 5!  Through the years, he proved to be a friend who was more like a brother, and I don’t think I could’ve survived growing up without him (or, at least, I think I would’ve needed even more counseling in my life had he not been a part of my growing up years). 

So many friends have come in and out of my life over the course of time.  I’m thankful that some have become closer than family to me.  I’m sad that some have betrayed me and turned their backs on our friendship.  I’m delighted when I become reacquainted with an old friend and we’re able to “pick up where we left off” with each other.  However, unlike my family experiences, I learned early on that friends are not always to be trusted, nor can you always count on friends.  My emotional wounds from friends were evident to me even when I was young, whereas, with my family, I didn’t realize my emotional hurts from them until I was grown and could step back and look at the memories from a more objective viewpoint.  

As a result of learning early that friends will sometimes hurt you, I became reserved with my emotions towards my friends.  I had more surface friendships and was scared to share too deeply with those in my life.  This was a formational part of my life puzzle, some of which I regret, yet, some of which could not be avoided.  It’s a sad, but true, part of life, that we are going to be wounded, often by those we think are the closest to us.  

I have a few friends with whom I am still in touch that I have known since kindergarten.  What a joy it was to see them at my 20^th high school reunion a few years ago!  Even though we never really spend time together, we sometimes e-mail or comment on each other’s Facebook profiles.    Renewing these friendships has seemed to restore a part of myself I’d forgotten existed.  Whenever I see one of them in person, my heart leaps and feels at home. 

A couple years ago, my dear Uncle passed away.  I anticipated attending his memorial service, knowing it would be a celebration of his life and that I would be reunited with family I hadn’t seen in years.  Surprisingly, one of the highlights of my day was seeing an old friend, one I hadn’t even thought of for quite a while.  

He was a boy who had gone to church with me when we were very young, but he and I attended different elementary schools.  When we entered Jr. High School, our grade schools both fed into the same Jr. High, so we were in school together for the rest of our teen years.  Here was a friend that was connected through church and school memories, and what an incredible joy to talk with him a few moments, to know he shared in my grief of losing my Uncle because my Uncle had impacted his life, as well.  

It all took me back to a part of my life puzzle that has been completed for years, a part I hadn’t been considering for some time.  I was able to see God’s handiwork in a new way, to appreciate that part of my life with renewed thankfulness and understanding as to how God has fit it all together.  Have you had that experience of seeing a friend from another time in your life, and you know that you know them, but you just can’t place them?  Then, a light goes off in your head and you remember them, and suddenly it all fits together.  That’s what it was like when I saw my friend at the memorial service, to a degree, and pieces of my life made more sense in that moment. 

I have been blessed to have great friends at all different stages, and locations, of my life.  There are those I don’t talk with regularly but whenever we meet, it’s like we were never apart.   Some with whom I share email jokes and inspirational stories, who send me their prayer requests and with whom I can share mine.  Still , there are those that are an active part of my life, who call, email, visit, text, Facebook, do whatever it takes to keep in touch and to share life together, no matter the distance.  Finally, there have been a few friends who were only in my life for a season.  It’s these friends that I don’t quite understand how their puzzle pieces fit into my life, at times. 

Those who were in my life, but now are no longer, be it from time, changes in life, distance, or a choice made by one of us, seem to almost haunt me with a lingering doubt and uncertainty as to God’s intentions or purposes for the heartache that is left when someone disappears from our day to day existence.  I’m thankful for Facebook, that has allowed me to reconnect with some of these friends, just to know they are there, and I have a means to contact them if I feel compelled to do so.  There are a few, though, about whom I do not have this assurance; I don’t know how to reach them, or they have made themselves unreachable to me.  I lack peace in these past relationships, and I don’t understand God’s purposes in this. 

I’m reminded of those hard to place puzzle pieces that you sometimes come across, or those spots in a puzzle where it seems that none of the pieces fit.  When I’m working a puzzle, I have to just leave those sections alone and go back to work on an area that does go together.  I figure I can come back to those unworkable pieces later on, when the rest of the picture is taking on more form, and that then it will make more sense as to what piece needs to go there. 

For those friendships that have left me without closure, without peace, I must lean into trusting God in a way that demands me to let it all go, to take off my hands and leave it in His.  I don’t always follow through on this; I pick it back up and question and worry.  Yet, whenever this happens, I realize that I’m only hurting myself more, that He is the one who will make sense of it all, in His time. 

There’s a wonderful Amy Grant song that crosses my mind regularly when I’m confronted with these unresolved friendship pieces of my life puzzle.  Her song says:

Why, why, why? Does it go this way?

Why, why, why…and all I can say…

Is somewhere down the road,

There’ll be answers to the question;

Somewhere down the road,

Though we cannot see it now;

Somewhere down the road,

You will find

Mighty Arms

Reaching for you,

And they will hold the answers,

At the end of the road. 

Yes, friends impact our lives in mighty ways, and God uses them to shape our life puzzles.  Understanding how He can use all of them to make our lives into something beautiful is paramount to our allowing Him to shape and create us into the people He intended for us to be from the start.  Part of that process includes blessings and is easier for us to embrace.  There will also be woundings in our experiences that God will use for His purposes, even though He isn’t the source of those wounds.

A few years ago, we attended a different church on Sunday mornings because we were drawn there by the music, the openness of the people, the lack of pretenses and the aesthetic environment of the services.  This church had as it’s focus loving others with no expectations, no limits, and no strings attached….being Christ to those with whom they came into contact.  My husband and I loved this because we have grown to live this way as a result of realizing that this is the way God loves us.

The older I get, the more settled I am, peaceful, in living my day-to-day life in the reality of being embraced freely by God’s love for me through His Son and the Spirit within me.  I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what others are thinking or feeling because I am simply trying to let Christ live through me and make me who He wants me to be, and His opinion of me is all that matters.

Yes, I sometimes fail Him; I sometimes miss the mark in my love and expressions of love for others.  However, I am open about my shortcomings and am drawn to those who accept me regardless of them.  On the flip side, I try to give others the grace and mercy that has been shown to me and love them without boundaries and without expectations, knowing that it is actually Christ in me doing His work to love others the way He would love them.

I’ve been sad to learn that not everyone, not even every Christian, loves in this way.  I can understand the drama in friendships that occurs in the lives of my teens, but as a 45 year old adult, I just don’t get that drama happening among adults.  So, I find myself learning some life lessons over these last couple of years, here in the middle part of my life, and adding new pieces to my life puzzle…or maybe just beginning to see definition to some pieces that were already in place.

God uses everything in our lives to mold and shape us into the people He desired us to be from the start.  I’m not saying He makes events occur or makes people treat us in certain ways, but that He uses it all in our lives.  I appreciate the words of Kelly Clarkson’s song, Stronger:

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
Stand a little taller…
What doesn’t kill you makes you fighter
Footsteps even lighter
Read more: Kelly Clarkson – Stronger Lyrics | MetroLyrics

I know the song isn’t totally scriptural, but it gets the point across that even the toughest stuff we face God can use to build our lives to be stronger.  He can also use trials to strengthen the Body of Christ as a whole.

In one of my daily devotionals recently, Henri Nouwen was writing about the Body and said, “As long as we think about the body of believers as a group of people who share a common faith in Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus remains an inspirational historical figure.  But when we realize that the body Jesus fashions in the Eucharist(Holy Communion) is his body, we can start to see what real presence is.  Jesus, who is present in the gifts of his Body and Blood, becomes present in the body of believers that is formed by these gifts.  We who receive the Body of Christ become the living Christ.”  We are knitted together by His presence that we receive through baptism and communion and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and when one part of the Body is hurt, the entire Body suffers, but when one part is strengthened, so the whole Body is.

“The church is the Body of people who know Someone who exist beyond themselves, who know that Person to be the Holy Spirit.  It is a wonderful thing to understand that a world exists beyond my grasp even though I cannot see, touch, measure, or control it.  In fact, I was made for it to control me.  The marvelous reality is that the Ruler of that other world cares more about you and about me than He does about Himself, and if we open ourselves to His presence, He can transform our routine daily existence so that it becomes a window looking into Heaven.” (Dennis Kinlaw)

Therefore, to apply all this to the behavior of adults, we cannot expect those who are not a part of the Body to act in the same fashion as those who are a part of the Body.  We must remain light to those who are still walking in darkness, remaining gracious and kind in the midst of challenging relationships.  Yet, those adults who are part of the Body and come into conflict with one another, are called to allow God’s Spirit to work towards healing of the Body so that the entire Body can then be strengthened.  Jesus prayed to his Father:  “May they all be one, just as, Father, you are in me and I am in you, so that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me” (John 17:21).

Several years ago, I was blessed to enjoy a retreat with my Mom, sisters, aunt, and a cousin.  That was my first time, ever, to be away from my husband and children for a full week.  It was also the first time we women had been together, as adults, for any length of time without having to care for others (our kids or husbands).  The week was remarkable. 

Of course, my oldest sister brought puzzles for us to work.  We had already worked 2 – 100 piece puzzles by the first morning, and we had been here less than 24 hours.  It goes without saying that my sister quickly completed hers, with a little help from Mom, then she helped my aunt and I finish ours.  She’s always been a whiz at working puzzles, unlike myself. 

When I started pulling together the pieces of my life back in my high school psychology class, I realized there was more to my life than met the eye, and much of it I didn’t understand.  I was no longer content to just live on the surface level of things, so I began to journey inward to make sense of it, and all the while more pieces were being added to my life puzzle.  This quest, pulling together these pieces, has been, and continues to be, an adventure that has taken me exploring through the lives of my family and friends, questioning the gifts and blessings in my life, reopening the wounds of my life and seeking healing of them, and reliving my life’s experiences, with God as the beginning and ending of it all. 

Have you ever thought about your life that way?  The first step in looking for the pieces of my life was recognizing that there were pieces to discover, that there was a puzzle, a bigger picture to my life.  When I became aware of this, my quest to pull those pieces together began.  Where would your quest to find the pieces of your life take you?  What pieces of your life need to be pulled together?   What are God’s intentions with all these pieces?  Can you trust Him with them? 

These are the questions I’ve sought to answer in my life.  I’ve prayed for God’s direction in this journey, to guide me to find all the pieces and to put them together for me.  My guess is, if you’d do the same, that you would find that your pieces come from similar areas of life such as mine.  We have all been affected by family (or the lack thereof).  Besides God, they were the first to influence our lives.  Friends and acquaintances usually formed the next pieces in our lives, interwoven with blessings and wounds experienced in the events and relationships of life.  God, of course, is the beginning and ending of it all, the One who gave life to us and the One who will be there when this life is over.

In John 10:10, Jesus says, “I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.”  Something I have learned in the last 15 years of my life is that living abundantly, living life to the full, means you have high highs and low lows.  Having fullness of life is never about everything going right all the time and never having any challenges, nor is it about everything going wrong all the time and seeing only the downside of life.

God created us to be really and truly ALIVE, to experience all that He intends for us in this life and the life to come.  Thinking of this often reminds me of the story of the Velveteen Rabbit.  The little stuffed bunny’s feelings were hurt when his little boy owner got a new toy and threw the bunny to the side.  The Velveteen Rabbit wondered what it would be like to be a real rabbit and if the boy would love him more than the new, technological toys, but while he was with the other toys, the hobby horse had some words of wisdom for him.  

“Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’

‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit. 

‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’ 

‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’ 

‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” 
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

In my ups and downs, weeks like I had last week, it helps me to remember that the abundant life is about becoming….about God making me into the “real” person He meant for me to be from the start.  So, when we have weeks where everything seems to be tough, when our sink is leaking and our son seriously sprains his ankle and I have a kidney stone and I find out I didn’t get the job I wanted, God uses all this to make us “real”.  If we never experienced these low times, then the high times wouldn’t be nearly as wonderful, and we would miss out on some opportunities for growth and learning, and we wouldn’t be living the abundant life that God has for each of us.

When I consider these truths, I find peace and move closer to accepting the difficulties of life as a part of the puzzle God is putting together from the pieces of my life.

If we truly want to put all the pieces together and be whole, we can allow Jesus to do it for us.  I’ve tried this and discovered that it requires commitment to a long process of puzzle-working, and there are times that I have felt it would never make sense.  The process has demanded that I relinquish hold of the pieces I thought were already fitting together.  I have had to let God be in control, and that isn’t always an easy thing to do.

In March 1998, we discovered I was expecting our third child.  We had not planned to have another child and had actually already sold some of our baby things.  So, it took me a little while to embrace the idea and accept it.

Later in the spring, my husband interviewed for a job at our alma mater, where we had been hoping to return for quite a while.  He didn’t get the job, and we were discouraged, and kind of symbolically “threw up our hands” and gave up on ever getting a job there (as this was about his 3rd time to be turned down).

We continued through the summer and my pregnancy was proving to be more challenging than the first two.  By September, I was told I needed to stop working and rest as much as possible.  I wasn’t due until November, so our finances took a blow which lead us to seek legal counsel and eventually took us down the path of bankruptcy, chapter 7 (more on this in a future post).

As the due date approached, the doctor saw that the baby was getting quite big and planned to induce me early.  We found out we were having a girl and tried to get ready for her arrival in a hurry, particularly since our first two were boys.

The doctor induced me on a Saturday morning, and the labor was stressful with my veins not doing well due to dehydration.  When it came time to push, my blood pressure was bottoming out and I almost fainted were it not for a nurse anesthetist who noticed my eyes rolling back in my head and took what measures were needed to keep me awake and pushing.  Our girl was born and yes, she was big, 10lbs.15.3oz!  However, she seemed bloated and swollen, like she wasn’t supposed to be that big…

During that first week, we were back and forth to the pediatrician a lot.  Our daughter wasn’t acting quite right and the doctor was concerned.  They checked her blood levels and urine samples several times, and her potassium level kept rising.  By the 6th day, we had her at Children’s hospital and her potassium was at 8.4 (which is dangerous because it can lead to cardiac arrest, but no one had told us that up to this point).

They had sent me home after being at Children’s all day doing testing, only to call me a half hour after I got back to the apartment to tell me to bring her again.  We weren’t comprehending what danger she was in at that time.  By the time we got her there and they took her blood again, her potassium had risen to 11.4 and the ultrasound was showing her kidneys weren’t functioning.

They whisked her away to do an emergency surgery that would allow them to perform dialysis to get the toxins out of her system.  We went to the parent room, pray, read Scripture, and called friends all over the world to pray for a miracle.  They came to get us when the surgery ended, and we went to see her with all the tubes and machines hooked up to her.

We were told to try to rest; there was nothing more we could do at that point.  Amazingly, we slept, for 5 hours.  When we woke, the nurses told us her levels were all back to normal and her kidneys were beginning to function again.  They left the dialysis “straw” in for 18 hours in case they would have to perform it again, but they didn’t.  She has never had a problem since, and now she is almost 15!

The nephrologist (kidney doctor) said he had never seen anyone survive a potassium that high.  All the staff were amazed that she lived.  We knew it was a miracle from the Father, and because she was an unexpected gift from Him in the first place, we knew He must have planned for her to be a part of our lives for a reason.

During that night of uncertainty, God took me to Isaiah 40 and it gave me great comfort.  He spoke promises to me about my future, even as I released her to His care and His choice as to whether or not she would survive.  We didn’t understand all His purposes or how all this was fitting into our life puzzles, but He knew, and we knew He could be trusted.

One piece of the puzzle we did find through this part of our journey was regarding my husband’s job rejection earlier that year.  We now understand that if he had gotten that job at that time we wouldn’t have had the insurance for our daughter’s care and we wouldn’t have lived close enough to a Children’s hospital for her life to be saved.  According to God’s awesome plan, later in 1999, my husband was called back regarding the job from the previous year at our alma mater, and he was offered the job because the person they had hired didn’t work out for the long term.  God’s ways are not our ways…..His plans are not our plans….but we can trust Him to put the pieces of our lives together!

Some people don’t sense the need to discover the missing pieces of their lives or try to understand how it all fits together.  We walk around like incomplete puzzles with huge gaps in the pictures of our lives, hoping no one will be able to see that we aren’t whole.  We try to cover up the blank spots with other pieces that we’ve made for ourselves, but those pieces never quite fit, and when someone gets close enough to us to look at the individual pieces, they soon uncover that we aren’t put together right.  This leads to more distortion as we attempt to rearrange them ourselves or they get torn apart and lost, and we scramble to try to fill the gaps again.  It doesn’t have to be this way…

Growing up, I highly disliked working puzzles.  My sister would always have one of those 5000 piece puzzles sitting out on a table, the entire winter, working on it as she had time.  Holiday time, when the entire family was around, puzzles would be brought out for everyone to work at putting them together.  I would stop and attempt to put in a few pieces, but I would quickly give up on it.  I couldn’t figure out a strategy.  It all seemed so random to me.

It’s only been in the last few years I’ve finally found some secrets to working puzzles.  Now, I can sit down and confidently work on one, knowing I can at least get the edges done and find some of the inner pieces, until it gets to the part where all the colors are the same.  I can’t say that I ever actually choose to work a puzzle, but at least I feel competent to associate with the puzzle-working crowd. 

On the flipside, fitting the pieces of my life-puzzle together has interested me for a very long time, since I took my first psychology class in high school.  That class started me to wondering about what had shaped me into who I was and what was forming me into who I was becoming.  I began to question why I did the things I did. 

I had a crush on the son of my high school Sunday School teacher.  He and I would often sing together in church, and we would spend many Sunday afternoons practicing songs, just for the fun of it.  I admired his Mom and looked to her for wisdom.  The two of them sang one particular song, regularly, and I never forgot the chorus to it. 

The song was called “Pieces”, and the words I remember were….

“He said pieces, pieces, so many pieces to your life…

scattered all around, and some of them are gone.

I can put them all together, and there will never be

another one who can.”

I was moved by those words, especially because of what it meant in the lives of that Sunday School teacher and her son.  They had come through a lot of rough places in life, and I knew what it took for them to trust that God could put the pieces of their lives together again.

That gave me courage and hope for my own life.  It spurred me on to begin the dangerous journey of searching for all the pieces to the puzzle of my life and allowing God to put them together to show me the big picture of how my life had come to that point, where it was going, and what He wanted to do to transform it so that the puzzle could be the picture He intended it to be from the start. 

The longer I live, the more I realize that everyone has puzzle pieces of their lives that are scattered and jumbled, that don’t make a lot of sense.  How easy it is for us to just let the pieces fall where they may and not try to put them together to find understanding and meaning in them.  It is a daunting task to allow God to take those pieces into His hands, to let Him reveal their meaning to us, and then to give Him the freedom to put the pieces together His way, so that the picture of our lives turns out as He desires it.

He is the Master Puzzle Maker, though, and no matter how we might try, we can never put together a life puzzle that will fit perfectly and become a breathtaking work of art.  When we give the pieces to Him, the life He forms from that puzzle, becomes a picture that makes sense; it takes it’s true and intended form, and ultimately, it radiates His glory for all to see.