It has been a dream of mine to put a 1000 piece puzzle
together as a family during the Advent season.
Last summer when I went to the Homeschooling Conference in Chicago, I
was able to buy a beautiful used 1000 piece puzzle of our Lady of
Guadalupe. I was just very lucky to get
this gorgeous puzzle for less than $5.
This advent I brought out the puzzle. For the first time
me and Sony started working on putting it together. George and Anna joined in whenever they could
and helped out in their own little ways.
George actually helped pick out the pieces of our Lady’s crown as well
as her chin. He always says that so
proudly and we are very proud of him for even finding those small pieces from
the 100s of tiny pieces of puzzles.
We had to be little careful with Anna since she also wanted
to help out but she would sometimes break the pieces that we put together or mix
up all the pieces together. Poor little
thing!! But we of course did not scold
her or isolated her rather always encouraged her to be a part of us and also
tried not to focus on the puzzle while she was around.
Our goal was to finish it by Christmas but it took us almost
till mid January to complete it. As you
can tell we did not have much time in our hands. So we
would put in very few minutes here are there and was finally able to accomplish
the goal. It was such a great experience
to be able to do this together. Even
though we were so busy with work, feast day celebrations, Christmas shopping,
family get-together, and travelling out of state, somehow I and Sony would
find each other around our dining table completely in silence fully focusing on
putting together this puzzle.
It was beautiful when I would spend so much time looking for a particular piece and all of a sudden Sony would find it and complete my missing part and vice versa.
This reminds me of advice from Bishop Robert Barron on how
to prepare for the coming of our King during Advent. He gave three ways to prepare and one of the
ways was to do a jigsaw puzzle together:
“As you assemble the puzzle think
of each piece as some aspect of your life: a relationship, a loss, a failure, a
great joy, an adventure, a place where you lived, something you shouldn't have
said, an act of generosity. So often the events of our lives seem like the
thousand pieces of a puzzle lying incoherently and disconnectedly before us. As
you patiently put the puzzle together, meditate on the fact that God is slowly,
according to his own plan and purpose, ordering the seemingly unrelated and
incongruous events of our lives into a picture of great beauty”
Isn’t that beautiful? I am so glad Bishop came out and said
something beautiful and profound as this about a jigsaw puzzle. Instead of just working on a puzzle, it helps us to reflect upon the many aspects of life.
Finally last month, there were only a handful of puzzles left to assemble to finish the final product and so one night after the kids went to bed we just spent an hour together and finished it around midnight. We had no plans to finish it that night but since the kids were not around asking for a million things and somehow we both did not want to leave the puzzle despite the fact that we were so tired and were yawning continuously. haha. Isn't our Lady looking so beautiful and radiant!! I loved this puzzle.
I hope in the future when the kids get older it will become their project more than ours and that was my vision when I dreamt about doing puzzles during the liturgical season. It brings the family together. It also brought our visitors to the table and there were many who contributed to this puzzle when they were just visiting us. It also reminds me of the universal church were we all come together before the body of Christ as one family.
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| Only one puzzle was missing even though it was a used puzzle. Whoever used this before took good care of it. |
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