Ch 1: First Encounter

Life is a jigsaw puzzle without the lid.

The Joy of Puzzling

I'm a jigsaw puzzle junkie. I think it's partly an endorphin thing.

Each time a piece is found yields a tiny, momentary, fleeting, and delicious triumph. The sound of the pieces connecting together perfectly with a soft but satisfying click. The faintest woody aroma of cardboard released by the rubbing together of perfectly matched pieces. Another fragment of the picture reveals itself. Endorphins rush.

My friend Betty calls me a Puzzle Savant.

I've learned that color and pattern can be misleading. I'm not so easily fooled. I look to shape as the primary criterion for finding the next piece. The one that Goes. Right. Here.

It's more than just searching out the correct pattern of bumps and slots. It's about noticing the subtleties of asymmetry and size.

My friend Cindy told me, "You're so observant."

That sentence probably summarizes me better than any of the pop-psychology tests I love to take.

It started with the usual preschool tray puzzles. The game changer was the plywood map of the United States. Each state was a separate piece. Mom Scotch-taped the tiny New England States together so they wouldn't get lost. They still bear the dried and blackened residue of her caution.

I have a photo of Dad and me with the first "grown-up" puzzle we built together in the mid-1960s. A 500-piecer. Puzzles became that father-daughter hobby that helped us maintain and mature our already close relationship in my late teens.

Mom passed away right before my senior year of high school. The next summer, with no one to complain about ruining the décor, Dad set up a 4x8-foot sheet of plywood on a couple of card tables in the middle of the living room.

We were free to indulge our puzzle addiction evening after evening. We had all the room we needed to spread out our 2,000-piecers. I would flop on my bed late, close my eyes, and still see the outlines of assembled pieces as if burned into the backs of my eyelids.

I became highly skilled in my table-top passion, able to spot tiny differences in proportions, angles, and skew.

Just as athletes train using ever-more-challenging physical tasks, I trained my brain with ever-more-challenging puzzle tasks. I started timing myself on the old wooden map and tried to beat my previous best time. I flipped over small cardboard puzzles so there were no color cues, just gray cardboard. I assembled larger puzzles without looking at the picture. Looking at the picture on the box lid began to feel like cheating.

And there you have it. My Prime Metaphor.

Life is a jigsaw puzzle without the lid.

The Little Notebook

God and I started corresponding in 1990, during a Women's Retreat at Temple Grove campground in northwestern Pennsylvania.

When I signed up for the retreat, I expected yummy snacks shared over how-have-you-been chatter. I expected rousing songs around a crackling fire. I expected inspiring and insightful spiritual classes. What I didn't expect was that one of those classes would change my life.

When I arrived at the first class, Gail, the teacher, handed me a 4x6-inch spiral notebook. On the cover were the words Memo Pad, along with a drawing of the tip of an old-fashioned fountain pen, like my Gramma Gladys used.

The Little Notebook

Right away, I was engaged. As a life-long compulsive note-taker and mega-nerd, being handed a brand-new notebook of any shape or size is an invitation to outright fun.

You say I can have my choice of cover color? Even more fun. I chose red.

The topic was spiritual journaling. Great! I’ve kept diaries off and on since grade school. A new twist on an old habit is always welcome.

Gail started us off with exercises designed to warm up our right brains. We worked with metaphors and adjectives and lists. Finally, she gave us an assignment:

Sometime during the remainder of the retreat, go find yourself a quiet spot. Take out your notebook and write a letter to God. Share with God your concerns and questions.

Next, turn to a fresh page. At the top, write "To my Daughter…" followed by your name.

Just write whatever comes into your head.

God's Pen Pal, Anyone?

Class was over. The retreat continued. Food, crafts, walks around the lake, more food. When evening snack time came, I nabbed my chance for some alone time with that notebook. While my roommates chatted and munched in the social hall, I crept off to my bunk, notebook in hand, and started writing.

I asked about several high-level concerns that plagued me: career path, housing choices, life purpose. As Gail had instructed, I turned to a new page, and wrote "To my daughter Sharon."

Without a moment's hesitation, the words flowed. Words that sounded like my own inner voice, but were not. Words that were in my vocabulary, but that sounded more like scripture than casual conversation. Not commands or instructions, but words of guidance and counsel.

Immediately, I started writing. Transcribing. Taking dictation. Furiously.

The words kept coming. They seemed to go on forever.

Maybe it seemed like forever because I was writing in such a tiny notebook. My handwriting is small and neat, but I could only fit in a short paragraph or two before I had to flip to the next page. It was like reading a book on a cell phone. Not much there on any one screen.

Oddly enough, while one part of my brain was receiving the words, another part of my brain was able to raise the question, "How will I know when this is done?"

Soon enough, near the beginning of page 4, I got my answer when the flow ended with the word "Amen."

Wow! I repositioned myself on the wooden bunk’s thin mattress and re-read what I’d just transcribed. As I read, I compulsively crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s I had left undone in the process of trying madly to keep up with the fire hose of words aimed my way.

If I could sum up the message in one sentence, it would be three small words: Be not afraid. The message ended with this:

…Be not afraid to do my will at all times. I am with you always. You fear too much to move out. I say again I will be with you, be not afraid.

In all you do, I will be there, even in your job, in your work, at home, wherever, I am always there, and the tokens of my affection will be there for you to see in all you do.

Remember that I love you as a daughter, as my child. Love me also as I have loved you. Be not afraid to love with all your heart. Amen.

I was thunderstruck. Those four pages of guidance in the little notebook addressed my specific concerns and questions. God had spoken to me, personally. I was sure of it.

In all my thirty-six years of church-going, I had heard hundreds of testimonies of amazing spiritual experiences. But no one had mentioned an experience like this. I found myself wondering why. Was it that rare? Did others have this gift and just not talk about it? Or was it just not in my church family’s toolbox?

My roommates were coming back from snacks now. "Sharon, have you been in here all by yourself? Is everything ok?"

"Oh, yeah. I just wanted to be alone for a bit." Something amazing had just happened. I wasn't ready to speak up.

One Person’s Weird…

I felt elated, special, stunned, and a bit paranoid. I decided to wait and see if anyone else had tried the notebook exercise and gotten the same results. I tucked the notebook and the pen under the mattress.

What I didn’t feel was weird.

In my faith tradition, on occasion, people in leadership positions can and do receive prophetic messages. Not all the time, but when there is a need, someone will receive a message that translates into guidance.

Just to be clear, by "prophetic," I mean messages of an edifying nature (i.e., uplifting, encouraging, instructive, positive). I do not mean messages that predict the future.

“Prophetic” is normal. Not weird.

In my tradition it is also expected that both those who have received and those who hear the message would then pray for confirmation. "Confirmation" in the sense of assurance that the message was valid. Legit. Of a divine origin and unencumbered by the subconscious, self-serving desires of the messenger.

As I lay in my bunk that night, wide awake, God continued telling me things I then added as bullet points to the little journal. Well, that was the next morning, but still. I just knew I needed to capture what I felt was God-speaking-to-me while the flow continued.

Part of this message did not surprise me. I was told not to tell anyone about this journaling until I had received confirmation.

Right, got it! That was not going to be a problem!

I mean, look. If I wasn't ready to tell others who were in that class, I was even less ready to tell anyone outside of my church family.

What would people think of me? Weirdo? Deluded? Woo-woo nutcase?

Within the church family…this was normal…mostly. Outside the church family…weird…probably.

So, at first, I kept the story to myself, sharing it guardedly with two or three people I knew I could trust. One was a good friend, Doris, who’d had a similar experience that same weekend.

Telling her all about it was a real relief. We were both normal. Different maybe, yet still normal.

New Normal

In the years that followed, I journaled at least every few months. I watched for confirmation of the messages. I waited for the right opportunities to share.

In the "extra" part of that first message, the part that came after I had stopped writing, God had said many things would be opened up and made known to me if I would continue to ask.

I kept asking, and writing.

Over time, as old messages were confirmed (or sometimes not) and new messages were received, my confidence in and understanding of the prophetic process grew.

Every so often, I would feel brave enough to share my unusual spiritual gift with close friends or family. And, thankfully, no one called me crazy.

To discuss it publicly was never under serious consideration. Although to be honest, I did toy with the idea of writing a book a few years in. But I never made much progress on that.

As time went on, the journaling and the guidance became ever more important to me. What began as a new, unexpected, manna-like piece of my life’s puzzle soon proved to be an indispensable help in revealing the overall image.

I like to think of the progress of my relationship with God as a step function. Things go along at a certain level for a while. Upward progress comes at a slow, gradual, unnoticed pace. Then bam, something happens and that relationship jumps to a new level. Now that I think about it, human relationships, love relationships, often follow that same step curve.

In my relationship with God, Women's Retreat 1990 was the first bam. That weekend, when I discovered my gift for spiritual journaling (or what I now call Listening for Guidance), I was in the first trimester of my second pregnancy. As my children grew, so did my understanding of the gift.

God was a full partner in the conversation. God would often bring up topics I hadn't asked about. Among other things, God guided me through parenting, layoffs (first for me, then my husband), and the decision to move from Pittsburgh to South Carolina to start a business.

The second bam was my call to ministry in 1999 (with the title of Priest – sort of an entry-level position) right before the move south. Then, in 2006, I was ordained as an Elder, which meant I would have greater ministerial responsibilities. In my faith tradition, an ordination carries with it an expectation of a deepening of the relationship with God. This was the third bam.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. As I was saying, in those first early years of motherhood, the first years of spiritual journaling, my understanding of the gift grew as I continued to journal frequently. As it often does, much of my increased understanding came as a result of questions and challenges. And the first challenge was a doozy.

I’m trying an experiment with feedback and comments. I plan to start separate chat threads for each chapter. The intent is to provide a place for substantive CONSTRUCTIVE feedback.

Once you join chat, you’ll need to look for the relevant thread. In this case, it’s the one beginning: FEEDBACK THREAD -- Ch 1: First Encounter

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