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Puzzling It Out
December 10, 2005
Those who have visited our farmhouse kitchen know I have a table set up by the window that looks out to the barnyard with a jigsaw puzzle project, always incomplete, but there nevertheless for the spare moment when one of us (and often a visitor) needs to simply sit and create order out of chaos. I set this table up 5 years ago when I was suddenly faced with a week's recovery from appendicitis and could not muster energy enough for anything else. Over that time, we've completed many puzzles, but mostly the table sits there to remind me how disordered and scattered our daily lives are.
Like many people, I've sorted out the border pieces of my life, finding the badly needed boundaries that I live within. That is always the first task in any puzzling project, and the first task in our lives, as our boundaries are often set in stone by our parents and communities. I'm very unsettled until all the border pieces are identified and in place, and so it is with my life. If I'm not clear about my boundaries, I can end up straying where I surely don't belong, and perhaps have difficulty finding my way back. Much of my work is with people who have had no boundaries set in their lives and they struggle with the lack of structure and expectations, lack of responsibility and accountability as a result. Finding their border pieces is one of my main therapeutic tasks.
Next is the 'grouping' of like pieces and that sorting process is not always straight forward. Colors and textures can deceive and not always fit where they were originally grouped. Like the people and events in our lives, we may think all makes sense and is nice and tidy together, but there are times when it is all wrong-- the relationship sours, or the business goes bankrupt or the horse decides to get tangled in the fence wire. What seems to fit no longer does, and we must strive to find the right spot for it in our lives, even if it seems there is no place for it, we know it must go somewhere.
I have to admit what bothers me most are the holes in the puzzle. The empty spots are constant reminders of my inability to find the right pieces and set it right. I can look at a puzzle for 30 minutes straight and may not be able to fill a hole. I may live 5 decades and still not fill the holes in my life. They are out there, sometimes small and seemingly insignificant and sometimes huge and gaping, ready to swallow me up if I step just a little too close. I can fall into those empty spaces and perhaps never return if I don't have a rescue plan. In my puzzling, I resort to trying every piece until I find the right one. In my daily life, I find I must rely on something far more perceptive than my limited view to keep me from harm and obliteration.
This is a month of waiting and watching. Our human existence is fraught with chaos, fragmented boundaries and deep gaping holes ready to swallow us. Yet, as have generations before us, during advent we seek the security of the manger, the warm and loving arms of the mother and Father, and the reassurance that we do not need to be afraid of what lies ahead. The puzzle is completed in the knowledge that salvation has come, it dwells with us in the most lowly of places--our barns and our hearts--and we are completed and safe. This is one puzzle I'll never box up and stow away but will admire and cherish daily the rest of my life.
in anticipation of Christmas,
Emily http://www.briarcroft.com/emily.htm