God’s plans for our children are like a puzzle larger than any Sandy Ramsey-Trayvick has ever completed. In today’s post she describes how putting together jigsaw puzzles had shown her to trust in God’s plans for her kids.

I began doing jigsaw puzzles again while we were sheltering in place during the COVID pandemic. As I got back into my reactivated hobby, I remembered what I’d always enjoyed about putting them together. I loved watching the emergence of the picture or landscape as it was slowly revealed with the addition of each new piece. Of course, it was no surprise to see the picture revealed; I knew it was already there waiting to be displayed. However, knowing the picture was already there didn’t take away from the pleasure of its revelation.

God’s plan for our children—the potential he has placed uniquely in each of them to help move his kingdom forward—comes in pieces. Like a puzzle. And he provides our kids with opportunities and experiences for those pieces to come together—step-by-step, one piece at a time. The Lord already knows the picture he wants to reveal, yet he requires us to trust him with what it will look like. We don’t get to decide what his planned outcome for our kids will be; he does. However, we do get to participate in the picture’s emergence as we help our children step into the opportunities and experiences he provides.

The most challenging puzzles for me are the ones which include varieties of shapes and sizes in the puzzle pieces—no two exactly the same. Some of the pieces are so oddly shaped that it appears initially they’d fit nowhere. Yet, each piece of the puzzle, even those with the most convoluted shapes and unexpected sizes, is needed to complete the final picture. One of my greatest puzzling pleasures is discovering the spaces where those hard-to-fit pieces actually belong.

Though Scripture promises each of us that God has a good plan for our lives, it can be challenging to understand how a particularly difficult circumstance or a long, hard season could ever contribute to something good. These are the puzzle pieces that seem initially like they’d never fit anywhere in God’s good plan. And they may continue to look that way for a while, until more of the picture, the plan, emerges.

There is a process involved in putting jigsaw puzzles together that must be followed in order for the correct picture to be displayed. Each puzzle piece has to be added at the right time. Some pieces won’t fit into the puzzle until other pieces are in place first—to create the connection to the rest of the puzzle. If we try to circumvent the process by forcing pieces into places where they don’t actually fit or if we leave out pieces we don’t like, the finished puzzle will not reflect the intended outcome. In fact, the finished product will look wrong and confusing. Yet when we adhere to the process of adding each piece at the point when it can be connected to other pieces, the beauty and purpose of each piece becomes evident and clear.

God’s plans for our children are like a puzzle. He adheres to his process of revealing his plan for our children and so must we. When pieces of our child’s life don’t seem like they could ever fit into something good, we can trust God to provide the opportunities and experiences for every piece to come together at the right time for something beautiful to emerge.

We are confident that God is able to orchestrate everything
to work toward something good and beautiful
when we love Him and accept His invitation to live according to His plan.
Romans 8:28 (The Voice)

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