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Words by MarJanita Geigley | Photography by Kristi Smucker
I ENJOY PLANNING PARTIES and am always on the lookout for good group games that don’t require
a lot of preparation and supplies. Just recently, I discovered a fun one that only needs two kiddie-style
puzzles. To play, a group of people needs to be divided into two teams, and then each team is given a
puzzle. Finally, each player is given a few pieces from his team’s puzzle and must work at fitting his pieces
together with the others on the team in order to be the first team finished. This game is fun because it is
competitive and harder than it looks. When you only have one or two pieces, it is hard to figure out how
those belong in the big picture.
Sometimes life feels a lot like this game: God has given each of us a puzzle piece and that is all we are able
to see and know. Allow me to take my piece out and look at it. Here, I’ll even show it to you. It has four
sides. One side is straight; two sides have indentations where other puzzle pieces can join mine; and the
last side is intended to join another piece. I have many colors on my piece - a spot of yellow, a corner of
sky blue, a faint hue of neon green, and quite a bit of dark-toned grays, purples, and browns. A thin line
runs diagonally across the piece. Is it part of a tree branch or is it a mountain? Is it the roof of a building
or is it a flower? Your guess is as good as mine.
It is frustrating to not know what the entire puzzle looks like. I feel worried about what the dark shadows
on my piece represent. How and where do I fit into the puzzle exactly? Because I have space on my piece
to join with other pieces, does it mean that I am reserved for a “special” partner piece or is it there because
I am called to join and serve a particular mission and people?
See, we are human - we really do not know a lot. Oh yes, God can give us dreams and intuitions, but we
still cannot sit down and write in exact detail where we’ll be living, what we’ll be doing, and with whom
we’ll be associating in twenty years. To a control freak like me, that is unsettling; so I clutch my piece and
frantically start to design my own puzzle. I saw this happen a lot when I worked as an activities associate
in the dementia unit at a local retirement home. Sometimes, a f