When the pieces finally fit

Is there a plan for all of this?

There are no accidents.

I've said that over and over throughout my life, when seemingly random events have come together in a way that I could never have foreseen. The idea of a grand master plan for our lives is at times very comforting, offering us a reason, albeit so far unknown, for the trials we encounter as we move around on this planet. The concept of life as a vast, complex test with G-d as the proctor is an idea as old as organized religion.

But the pieces I'm wondering about are people. Sometimes people come into our lives and in a very short period of time, it feels as though they have always been a part of our experience. It's as though they were missing pieces of the the puzzle, finally located and added onto the growing picture in front of us.

Sometimes, like real puzzle pieces, they have been right in front of us all along but we couldn't see them at first because they were facing away, or another piece hid them from sight. Other times, they are far from the puzzle itself, somehow hidden on the other side of the room (or the other side of the world.) Just like in a 1000 piece puzzle, we may have all the parts but we can't see how the pieces fit until we have added others to our picture, creating a space for them, matching lines and images and shapes at last.

And once in awhile, we add a piece to our puzzle, believing that it fits because we so desperately want it to. But as the picture grows, we see that the piece doesn't belong and as much as don't want to, we have to remove it to add the correct one instead.

The metaphor of the puzzle seems so apt, not because life is so confusing or mysterious (although at times it is both) but because all the little pieces come together to create a beautiful image we could not see when the bits were separate and jumbled in the box.

Lately, I've been adding some new pieces to my own life's puzzle. And while some have come from far away, the way they fit into the whole, and the beauty they've added to the image takes my breath away. It's too perfect to be random. The image I see forming is far too intricate and subtly hued to be an act of chance.


And so I go back to the beginning.

There are no accidents.