My 15-year old daughter stood in the kitchen. She was becoming familiar with the disappointing news I had just delivered, shredding Kleenex. She knew the news was minor in the scheme of things. It still stung.
I let her feel for a few minutes and then I spoke straight from my bruised , 40-something mother heart. Of ways that God had redeemed things in my adult life. Cancer, mistakes, hurt……
But I knew she wasn’t hearing it.
So I held her hands and spoke into her teary eyes. I spoke of the 15-year-old me and of a time I was so angry at God I just hid. Behind everything. With anyone. And I told her the truth about herself. Truths that we all forget when we don’t understand.
I spoke squarely into the disappointment. These things:
The next morning we went to church and I packed more Kleenex. A puzzle piece sat on each chair.
One piece of a greater picture.
The sermon sliced into the exact place we needed to remember. That sometimes we are dealt a piece of a larger puzzle that we don’t understand and we want to trade it with someone else’s, or give it back. Or at the very least have a real face-to-face with God as to why exactly he had given or allowed this one to be placed on our seat. In our hands. In our life. I gulped hard through each song and hung on each of the pastor’s words. I nodded more times than I can count. He reminded us that the first words of the bible are these: “In the beginning God….” Not “in the beginning ME or in the beginning YOU……” We needed to go back to the beginning.
The sermon sliced into the exact place we needed to remember. That sometimes we are dealt a piece of a larger puzzle that we don’t understand and we want to trade it with someone else’s, or give it back. Or at the very least have a real face-to-face with God as to why exactly he had given or allowed this one to be placed on our seat. In our hands. In our life. I gulped hard through each song and hung on each of the pastor’s words. I nodded more times than I can count. He reminded us that the first words of the bible are these: “In the beginning God….” Not “in the beginning ME or in the beginning YOU……” We needed to go back to the beginning.
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He flashed the box top of the puzzle so we could see the big picture from which ours came. Suddenly it was clear how our tiny piece might fit in that picture of the cherub angels.
Mine was an angel. Hers was too. We were part of the angels.
Mine was an angel. Hers was too. We were part of the angels.
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After communion that daughter of mine stumbled to the cross to kneel. She cried there, letting go of her puzzle piece and laying down the disappointment. Everything in me came undone as I joined her. My husband was next, and then her brother. We knelt behind her in the not-knowing. Because what we DO know is that she is beloved. And that Jeremiah 29:11 is as true for her today as it has ever been. A part of me wanted to stand and scream that she has no idea that this is only the tiniest of beginnings of the laying down. That this piece is so very small. That she will need to go to this place daily. That someday she might lay down a dream or a marriage or a child or her health.
But I didn’t scream. I just held her. We just gave her our presence. We gave this one puzzle piece the reverence that it deserved. And then we got up. We got up in the not-knowing. We got up in the everyday. We got up in the knowledge that every puzzle piece we are given is a chance to be a part of the huge story God is painting.
I think maybe this was the moment that explained why I love quilts and stained-glass windows so much. I love them because each consists of tiny, random pieces becoming something beautiful when placed together. Even in the not-knowing.
Follow Beloved in Blue Jeans on Facebook here. I’d love to travel down this path a bit with you.
