PUZZLES

PUZZLES

            I love puzzles—word puzzles, brain teasers, jigsaw puzzles.  In fact, recently I have started doing a word puzzle or brain teaser right before I go to sleep.  After all, you have heard it too:  if you want to keep your intelligence and not succumb to age-related memory disorders, you have to keep your mind active!  So I am adding anything I think will help me keep my brain active.  I find that I become obsessive—I have to do one more puzzle, find one more word, answer one more question.

            I don’t love all puzzles though.  I don’t like the puzzling situations in life, the things I cannot explain.  I have trouble letting God be the one with the answers.  I ask “Why, God?  Why did you allow this to happen?  Why didn’t you stop it?  You could have, you know.”  Don’t tell me I shouldn’t ask why!  How am I going to learn the lessons God wants me to learn if I do not ask why?  Sometimes He shows me why.  Sometimes He lets me continue to question.

            I reread an entry in my journal this week from October 16, 2009.  It reads, “God, why?  I don’t understand.  I don’t understand.  I don’t understand.  Help me to accept and trust even when I don’t understand.”

            John and Rachel had just been told they would never have children of their own.  I wrote, “John has always loved children and they have always loved him.  When he was young and you asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, his answer was always, ‘A daddy!’  Rachel has always wanted children.  She helped raise her six younger siblings.  She wanted to be a stay-at-home mommy.  So what are you going to do with this, Lord?  I know you will do something, but couldn’t you let me in on it?  Adoption?  Working in an orphanage?  What are the possibilities?  Lord, help me to trust.”

            On September 5, 2011, I wrote, “I woke up at my usual time with one thought—Mikaela!  I even came up with a middle name, though I am sure that John and Rachel will not use it—Mikaela Joy, for the joy that a child is born!  Mikaela Joy will be born very soon.  She is due the end of September.  Her parents looked through profiles of couples on Bethany’s adoption website.  John and Rachel were the third couple they looked at and they looked no further.  Oh, Jesus, a baby!  A precious child on loan from You!”

            And Micaela Jocelyn (not Joy, but happy or joyful) was born September 19, 2011.  God let me see a partial answer to my question.

 But God does not give me answers about everything.  Why did God allow my marriage to fail?  I wanted so desperately to have a marriage that honored Him.  I did everything I could think of to fix it.  I begged God to heal my marriage.  He didn’t hear me; no, He didn’t tell me why it was happening and He didn’t keep my marriage from exploding.  I will forever carry my grief over that unanswered question. 

So how do I respond to the missing pieces of the puzzle?  Here is my answer.  Philippians 1:6 says, “Being confident of this very thing, that He who hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.”  That is the answer.  I must trust God for the end.  There is no assurance that the pieces of the puzzle will fit, that we will see the completed puzzle.  Only God sees the final picture.

                                                            ~~ Faith Himes Lamb