Picture Puzzles

There seems to be something magic about picture puzzles. Individuals, couples, friends, and whole families become enthralled with them. And they find a reduced level of stress in their lives, and a common bond that draws them together.

I saw a news report some time ago about a family that had traditionally spent their holidays putting picture puzzles together. The whole family—father, mother, and several children, both boys and girls—worked on the projects. When they finished a puzzle, they glued it together, framed it, and hung it on the wall. As the years passed their paths diverged; the children married and began families of their own. And yet, holidays found them all together again, putting picture puzzles together—along with their own children.

In my own experience I've found picture puzzles a means to a bonding between my wife and me, and between my children and both of us.

At one point in our marriage my wife and I had become estranged. I had spent too much time with my pastoral work and not enough time with my family. We had grown apart, slowly, imperceptibly. One day I asked my wife why she never said she loved me anymore. "Because I don't," came her curt, but honest reply. And I discovered that we didn't really know each other anymore.

What to do? I loved her and didn't want to loose her. I counseled with a friend in the conference office. "What should I do?" I asked. "You should take whatever time you find is necessary to win her love back again," he replied.

So I spent lots of time with her. We went shopping together, we went to museums together, we worked together . . . we assembled picture puzzles together. And over the period of two years, we grew again to love each other.

We did lots of things together during that time. So why do I look at the assembling of picture puzzles as one of the major factors in bringing us back together. I'm not really sure. Except that, while we were working on a puzzle, we were both together . . . 100% focused on a common task. We didn't talk a lot, though we did discuss some interesting and vital subjects. We didn't look at each other a lot, though we did enjoy some increasingly meaningful glances. We were just . . . together. Being, feeling, working, doing together.

There are few activities in which husband and wife—families—can become involved in which they work so completely, unreservedly toward a common goal. The unity of purpose contained in the effort to complete the picture salves over the scars caused by callous or angry statements. Peace reigns.

Is it the puzzle that works such reactions upon the minds and souls of those who assemble them? No. There's nothing magic in picture puzzles. But in working together to assemble one, we put into practice a Biblical principle: "Can two walk together except they be agreed?" And agreement—even between antagonists—on so minor a thing as assembling a picture puzzle, is the first step toward a relationship that can last a lifetime.