The Love Puzzle
Feb 09, 2026
Have you ever thought about love like a puzzle?
I love a good puzzle. I'm the designated sorter for my family. Sorting the pieces into piles of the different colors and textures of the image is so satisfying. I love to explore similarities and differences and determine what pieces are likely to fit together. This is the same skill of discovery I get nerdy excited about as a qualitative researcher. It is a way to bring order to chaos for me.
I have a puzzle spread out in my family room right now on a giant whiteboard. It is the beautiful painting by Sabrina Squires called The Love of God, which I was given as a birthdat gift.
Over the course of a few weeks we have been piecing together this brightly rainbow colored tree with white balls of fruit.
As this image is coming together, it invites me to think about the roots and the fruits of love in our lives. Sometimes life and relationships can feel a little chaotic, and I need to find some more order in all of it. As I focus this year on the different aspects of the soul and how God asks us to love Him, ourselves, and our neighbors with all these aspects--body, spirit, heart, and mind--I can't help but think of this love like a puzzle I want to explore more.
That curiosity made me want to talk to some amazing mentors about their unique experiences with love. I interviewed Whitney Archibald, a podcaster and mother of five, and she shared about how she was awakened to a new kind of love through her very unusual experience.
Whitney fell 30 feet while rock climbing in Utah with her family. Though her survival was miraculous, several broken bones and medical complications kept her in the hospital and away from her family for months. From the very beginning of this experience, Whitney describes ho she was gifted with a deeper kind of love. Her example helped me fit together some important pieces of the love puzzle.
One piece was being able to see with new eyes, with this pure love of Christ. Another piece was the importance of choosing to let love infuse how we see both ourselves and each other. Having eyes to see the good helps our hearts to extend more grace in the humanness we all show.
I also saw how the pieces of both generously giving and humbly receiving acts of service fit our lives together in a vital way in building love in Zion.
This conversation and the mentoring example of Whitney spread out this love puzzle in my mind. I've started sorting. I look forward to continue gathering more pieces from other mentors and studies.
Reflection questions: What expands your experience with giving and receiving love? What does it feel like for you to see someone as Christ sees them? Can you think of a specific example of that in your life?
