Wednesday, December 17, 2014

A Hole in the Plan

We built Harper's puzzle almost two months ago.

We even started filling in names on it.
The names of all the people who have donated to our adoption so far.
I wrote somewhere around 70 names on different puzzle pieces.
I wrote several blogposts about it.
It wasn't very smart of me.
We had a rather glaring problem with the puzzle but instead of addressing the issue, I ignored the obvious and plowed on ahead.

I wrote names thinking that the problem would eventually just go away and no one would be wiser.
That HUGE glitch should have given me pause....
I should have paid more attention to that rather GAPING hole...
Do you see it??

That glaring hole where a piece is supposed to be???

We saw that hole when we were building the puzzle.
We kept figuring it would show up. 
It didn't.
We looked and looked.  We took up the carpets and moved the fridge and looked in cabinets and pulled apart our pockets. 
It was gone.
Most likely it had never been. Since we built the puzzle in the same place and had it finished within a day of opening the box, and after tearing up our house... we were fairly certain it was not part of the box to begin with.
But we were optimistic about our dilemma and went ahead and started putting names on puzzle pieces.
We figured we had three options; find the missing piece, design our own piece to fit into that empty spot or get another puzzle and just replace the missing piece. So I happily wrote names and took pictures and figured the hole would eventually disappear without anyone being any wiser.

But the piece didn't appear which meant that hole didn't disappear.

And creating a piece for that spot really wasn't very realistic.

Buying another 20 dollar puzzle wasn't where we wanted to spend our hard-earned money, but we didn't want a puzzle with a messed-up piece so we decided to get another puzzle.  I called the company.  I shared with them why we were building the puzzle and explained our dilemna. They replaced the puzzle for free.  Wow!  Even though we couldn't prove that it was missing from the box, they went ahead and replaced the puzzle.  The Cobble Hill Puzzle Company has INTEGRITY! 
They sent us a new puzzle.

Home free right???  We just had to sort through the box and find that missing piece and put it in and get on about the business of adding a whole bunch of new names of KIND PEOPLE who keep dropping donations into our hands for Harper!!

Easy Peasy!

Problem Solved!

A hole in one!
When we received the puzzle last week, Rob immediately opened it up only to discover that the pictures match perfectly BUT THE PIECES DO NOT.  The puzzle is cut completely different from the first one.

There is no way we can use the new puzzle to fix the old puzzle.
We have to rebuild the puzzle and redo all the names!
You are allowed to Laugh.
It's funny.
We are laughing.

We feel like a bunch of goofballs!
Honestly, we don't really mind too much redoing the puzzle. Our family enjoys building puzzles together. 

And writing the names again allows me another opportunity to whisper grateful prayers of thanks to each one who has  given.
Plus, building the puzzle again with Ben helping this time is definitely sweet because he is beyond thrilled to be getting a little sister.
So our little hole in the plan is getting fixed soon, and we will be back to writing names on puzzle pieces in the coming weeks.

And man do we have a LOT of names to write on that puzzle!!
If you look at the thermometer on our sidebar you can see how much has come in.  It is a total of all the donations we have received so far: In our Reece's Rainbow account, our You-Caring account, checks and cash people have given us and all the little envelopes and bags of change from my precious precious students. 

God has been good.

 People have truly been kind. 





  1. What an adventure !
    And people are so generous !
    I am so pleased to see the amount growing !

  2. As I was reading this post, I was thinking how fun it would be to leave it as it is. As a reminder that the whole of some things are never really finished until we are in heaven. About how your family was looking for that missing piece and Harper is it. About how we are all looking for the missing piece of our lives and Jesus fills it. And about the beauty in the imperfect.


Loving words from kind people make our hearts glad!