Am I a dweeb if I like to do puzzles?

So you all need to know that I have never been accused of being “too” cool.  I know that is hard for many of you to believe, but it is true that I have a sort of dweeby side to me.  Recently, my “dweebiness” has been expressed through the art of puzzles.  It started as a family hang out time in August.  But six puzzles later it seems that I am the only one who is still committed to puzzling as a leisure activity.  Jack and Jada have totally lost interest.  I think Jaron likes the idea of puzzles, but he seems to lack the fine motor skills required to put them together.  Even Jenni has cooled off on puzzles… I saved the last two pieces of the last one for her, so we’ll see if that is exciting enough for her to stay interested in the next one.

Besides being really cool, puzzling has some spiritual insight to it as well.  When you first empty a 1000 piece puzzle out on the table (we don’t do 100 piece Scooby Doo puzzles at my house), it can be a little overwhelming… there are times when it seems like you will never find another fit.  But after investing some time in a puzzle something cool happens.  If you have a couple of hours invested in a puzzle , you can literally walk up to the table, find a piece, and in a few seconds put it where it goes… for puzzlers like me, this is the moment we live for.   It was Jenni who compared this phenomenom to spending time with God.  There are many times when the idea of our faith seems overwhelming, or we feel so far from God that we wonder if we will ever be to a place where we aren’t plagued with doubt.  But if we invest significant amounts of time in being with God, an amazing thing happens… we will start to recognize him more quickly and in strange places… what we once would have called coincidence, we now recognize as God’s grace to us… what once confused us or seemed elusive, now begins to make some sense.  At some point when we spend enough time with God, “the pieces begin to fall into place”.  It is these moments that can fuel us through spiritual dry times when we have a harder time recognizing God working in our lives.

Oh, and by the way, if you promise not too laugh at me, you can come in my garage and see the puzzles that we’ve/i’ve put together… it pained me too much to take them apart so I glued them together and hung them in the garage.  Yes, I know… I’m a major dweeb!

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