Of Missing Puzzle Pieces & Missteps

Make puzzles they said. Easy money they said. Easy peezy lemon squeezy they said. Okay, the last one I said. Can you sense the sarcasm?

Who are they? YouTube money making side hustle gurus that’s who. In all fairness I’ve been scanning these types of videos for a few years now and have decided that most of them are actually making more money from the YouTube monetization than they are from the side hustles, but that’s for another blog.

This blog is about puzzles.

I have an Etsy shop where I sell mostly cell phones cases with very unique, and some think, dark illustrations. You get the picture, goth Alice in Wonderland stuff, but beautiful. At least to me they’re beautiful. One thing that I have learned through the years is that what I think is beautiful doesn’t fit the standard version of what I’ve been taught should be acceptable for a child of the most High God. Now I’ve come to the realization of who are we, mere dust motes in both the physical and spiritual cosmos, to decide what is beautiful for other people? If we are aligned with the Lord then what we think is beautiful will align with Him too. Believe me when I say He’ll tell us when we’ve strayed too far from the beautiful into the profane.

Anyway, I decided that I would try to sell one of my phone case designs as a puzzle. I don’t ever put anything in my shop unless I see it in real life, because I want to make sure the quality is good, and people will get what they’ve ordered. I guess you could call it quality control. So, I ordered a puzzle, a goth Alice in Wonderland with the Mad Hatter puzzle – smallish, 8×10, with 120 pieces. During print on demand production what happens is the manufacturer creates the whole puzzle as one piece, then runs it through a cutting machine to make the 120 smaller pieces that will be put together by the puzzler. So, every piece has a spot, they should all fit together perfectly because they’re cut from one large, whole complete design. As with all puzzles, it should get easier to complete the puzzle the closer we get to the end, because there are less pieces and there are less places for them to fit into. That’s the theory anyway.

Theory doesn’t always fit with real life. The puzzle, although beautiful, has many, many dark areas. If you’re a puzzler, you know that dark areas can be particularly challenging because there are no guiding illustrations or areas of light to know where to put the pieces. Usually though when you get started putting together those areas of the darkest night once you’ve started getting them together, they fit together nicely and you fall into a pattern that should go together correctly. Because this is typically what happens with puzzling, this was my assumption with my puzzle, until it wasn’t.

I had put together almost all of the pieces. My son had even helped, making the comment that it was actually a really difficult puzzle. I had to agree especially when I got to the point where I only had five pieces left and none of them were fitting into the five open spaces. I kept counting the open spaces, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, then counting the pieces again, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. No matter how many times I counted, and no matter how many times I tried to make those last pieces fit they wouldn’t. It didn’t matter how many times I turned the pieces and tried to match them together it was a no go. I realized I’d somehow made critical mistakes in the dark places that led to putting pieces in the puzzle that seemed like they fit but didn’t.

As I sat back and looked at the almost complete puzzle with its holes and five extra pieces that didn’t fit, I realized I could do one of two things. Either take the whole puzzle apart and start over from the beginning or figure out what pieces in the puzzle were put in incorrectly. This would mean matching the puzzle pieces that were left over to other pieces of the same shape and size that were already in place, then begin the arduous task of swapping them out until everything was in its correct spot.

And, this is the way of our lives isn’t it? We believe we’ve taken the right steps as we’re bipping along, putting the right pieces of our lives in place only to discover far down the path we’re on that somehow in the darkness we stepped away and started putting our feet in the wrong places. Places that led us away from the path the Lord may have intended for us. As we stand at that point looking at the pieces in our lives that aren’t fitting no matter how we try to make them work, we only have two choices. Take everything apart and start over, or start the arduous task of figuring out what steps we got wrong, retrace those steps to the place where we began to deviate from the Lord’s path and make sure we are close enough to Him that we place our feet in the places He wants to go.

“Unto the upright there arises light in the darkness; He is gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous. A good man deals graciously and lends; He will guide his affairs with discretion.” Psalm 112:4-5 – New King James Version

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How Are Red Vines Related To Ministry?

Some things are just strange aren’t they? Just yesterday I received a message from a friend of mine thanking me for ministering to her the day before.

Red Vines can help you minister to others.

As I sat looking at the message, I wondered what in the world she was talking about. I quickly went over the day before, and couldn’t see any way that I had ministered to her. So, I took stock of the day again, this time much more slowly, and still, I couldn’t come up with a thing. As far as I could see, it was just another Sunday.

I though about asking her, but then thought “no”, because really it feels like a stupid question. Someone tells you that you helped them a bit, ministered to them (which is a little step up from just helping) and then you don’t remember what you did? I mean really, aren’t we supposed to remember this sort of thing?

Finally, after a couple of hours of coming back to it and wondering about it, it dawned on me that I just had to know what on earth she was talking about. So, I contacted her and her answer was simple. Red Vines.

Red Vines. The red, tasty licorice candy that’s low in fat and high in sugar. And, because it seems to chew forever, makes it feel like you’re eating a lot of the sugary treat when in reality you’ve only had a twist or two. Okay, maybe three, but that’s not the point.

Her answer left me more confused than ever, I realized that I had given her a box of Red Vines, and they weren’t even mine. They were hers. I had bought them for her when we were at the store the day before. She left them at my house, and, I knew I would see her the next day. So, I took them to church with me to give to her, praying all the while that they wouldn’t melt into some weird red gob of gooeyness as they sat in my hot truck during the service.

When I gave them to her, as far as I was concerned that was the end of it. But, for her, it wasn’t. The act of my remembering to giver her the box of Red Vines reminded her that someone thought about her, remembered her and cared enough about her to make sure that she could enjoy something she liked.

Later, I got to thinking that that’s really what ministry is all about. Thinking about someone, remembering them and then caring about them enough to do something about it. It’s in this very way, in the small things of life, that we can show others how much God thinks about each one of us, remembers who and what we are, and loves us enough to want to be a part of our lives.

“As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.”

Psalm 103:13-14

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