When I went home to visit last October, I brought back a puzzle with me to work on with the girls I disciple. One of my girls, Vanessa, mentioned that she really likes puzzles, so I bought a 1,000 piece puzzle of a picture of a winter scene (since they always talk about how they want to see snow), and I also bought some puzzle glue, so that when we finish, we can hang it up in their room.
Turns out that 1,000 piece puzzles take a LONG time! We’ve already put in a good two hours and all we have done is the border! We originally started working on it in my room on a table I have. The table ended up being a bit too small though, so I ended up moving it onto a big piece of cardboard. Well a few days before Christmas someone came to clean my room. I didn’t think to put a note or tell her to work around the puzzle; I guess I just assumed she would. I came back to my room hours later to find the cardboard folded in half on my bed. I dropped my bag and rushed to the bed, slowly peeking inside the cardboard, naively hoping that somehow it would still be in-tact. It of course was mixed up and moved around, no signs of a finished border at all. So I decided to move the puzzle once again to the trundle beneath my bed where it could stay safe in one piece. After moving the cardboard I decided I should put the pieces back together so that the girls wouldn’t have to do it all over again.
That’s when I realized there was a piece missing!! 999 out of a thousand may seem like a pretty good percentage, but when we’re talking puzzles, 100% is the only acceptable percentage! Especially when the plan is to glue together and hang on the wall. I was pretty distraught….for a week I kept my little secret from the girls, hoping to find it before they wanted to work on it next….
Almost two weeks later I was in my room stretching. It was also a rough morning, where I was worrying about the future… where will i go to school, what if i don’t have the money, what if i have to go by myself, where do i even begin, etc. It was a Sunday morning and in a few hours I was going to church. I prayed silently to myself, telling God that this morning I needed an obvious, specific, encouraging word from Him. I told him I needed it this morning and I emphasized the making it obvious, so that I wouldn’t miss it.
Not less than a minute later, as I began pondering how God would speak to me through the message, God gave me my instant answer to prayer right there in my room. I was doing a wide-leg, bent over hamstring stretch, so my face was pretty low to the ground. My eyes immediately caught sight of something across the room on the floor. “No way” I thought to myself, even though I already knew what it was. I walked over and picked up the missing puzzle piece. I pulled out the trundle and placed the piece in the missing spot.
Perfect fit. Completing the border. And right away it clicked. This was God’s answer, God’s encouragement for me that morning! God will be the one to put the pieces together. My life is an unfinished puzzle. And I can’t finish it because I don’t even have all the pieces! But they aren’t missing, they aren’t lost forever…. God will give me the necessary pieces, one tiny piece at a time. It was God’s neat way of saying to me: stop worrying, stop trying to force the future today… just work with what I’ve given you and I’ll give you the next piece when it’s time.
