This isn't the FOOTBALL FIELD!

Puzzles of any kind have always been a big part of my life. Any kind of puzzles: word, jigsaw, sudoku, crossword, or even a math problem has always captured my attention. One of my favorites is a tangled mess of necklaces. I have always enjoyed the challenge to get them straightened out or to complete or finish any other kind of enigma.

From my childhood, I remember my mother enjoying putting together a complex jigsaw puzzle, only to put it back in the box to solve again another day. That was the part that I hated. Taking apart what she had completed with what had started as a mess only to turn it back into a jumbled mix of pieces in a box was frustrating to me. Once I get something done, why would I want to do the same thing all over again?

The ingenuity of gluing puzzles together was absolutely genius. Credit of great magnitude should go to that amazing inventor. Glued together jigsaw puzzles are a beautiful reminder that something that was once a mess can be carefully and patiently put back together, sealed with the permanence of glue and allowed to display the work and diligence of the puzzle master.

In many ways my life has been a puzzle, a confusing mess that did not seem to have a solution; the pieces not fitting anywhere I tried to place them. It wasn’t until 1988 that I that I put my hands up in surrender (no, I wasn’t arrested!). Humbly, I fell on my knees and begged God to forgive me and please take over my life that had been like one of Mom’s old puzzles in the attic—put together, taken apart many times only to be thrown out in a tattered box with lost and broken pieces.