Life's Puzzle Pieces

It has always somewhat bothered me to hear people say that something is God's will, especially during times of tragedy. I never really knew why it bothered me so much until I reread stories told by Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen in her book, "Kitchen Table Wisdom." One story, in particular, comes to mind....

It is about a young Rachel, perhaps 3 or 4 years old at the time, observing her parents' love of puzzles. She recalls her father giving her mother a puzzle table and his gleefully pouring pieces to a puzzle on the table. To make the experience more challenging, her father hid the puzzle box top so that no one knew what the resulting picture was going to be. Rachel, deemed too young to have had the game explained to her, just stared at the puzzle pieces. This was a puzzle that had very many, small pieces. She noticed the different colors of each piece and decided that the dark ones reminded her of little black, ugly bugs. So she collected them and squirreled them away under a couch cushion. This has made putting the puzzle together a lot more challenging for the other members of her family until her mother noticed that there were indeed pieces missing. She asked Rachel if she knew the whereabouts of the missing pieces and she led her to her cache under the couch cushion, more than a hundred in all. The puzzle pieces finally out of hiding, Rachel's mother completed the puzzle revealing a beautiful picture of a serene seashore landscape. Rachel learned that the dark pieces served a collective purpose in completing something that is quite opposite of her initial, negative impression of each puzzle piece.

Life can be seen as a puzzle comprised of many, tiny, differently colored pieces - some are dark colored, some are light colored, and some aren't very colorful at all, but they all make up one big, beautiful picture. As any other person, I've been through difficult times - accruing the dark pieces that collectively make up an important part of me. I get through each dark piece of my life with the help and love of my family and friends. With each dark piece I add on to my life puzzle, I grow stronger, wiser, and more compassionate. I never want to have the dark pieces hidden from me because it's the dark times in my life where I experience growth and truly (re)discover my strengths and the strengths of the people I love. Without darkness, there is no light.

So when someone tells me that something is God's will or that some bad occurrence is just the devil trying to take over me, in a way, I am being denied of the opportunity to find deeper meaning in life's tragedies as only I know how. It's like I'm being fed some mindless, prefabricated platitude to silence my inner turmoil and to squelch the desire to reach out and connect with others. It's an attempt to hide that puzzle piece I need to complete me and make my life whole. As many tragedies there are in our lives, we need to find meaning in them. Otherwise, how else are we going to know we are alive?

It's not perfect, but then again, perfect is boring.