God gives us what we NEED...

"God doesn't give you the people you want, He gives you the people you NEED..."
Wow, I like to believe that's true; in fact I need to believe it's true. Don't we all want that to be a fact? And it sounds simple enough and really lovely when taken as it stands.

But what about the next part of the quote: "to help you, to hurt you, to leave you, to love you..."
"to help you" and "to love you" Great, wonderful, excellent!!!!!
"to hurt you" and "to leave you"? Whoa! Huh? What? Why? Why would a God who loves us bring us hurt, bring into our lives people who will hurt us and leave us?

And this is where my problem is... how do I reconcile it?... and I struggle with it. I've been hurt and I've been left (in the many forms those may take) but I don't ever think of those as belonging to God... or that those were some part of His plan. It's easy to be angry with a person for hurting you or leaving you, right? Much harder to be angry at God - in fact, mostly, I don't even think we figure Him into the equation.

But when I look at my life I realize that it's the sum of my experiences and emotions that make me who I am. Can we REALLY understand and appreciate the beauty of love and joy and all the good stuff if we haven't experienced pain and hurt and loss? I'd like to believe (or pretend) we can, but the truth is I don't really believe that.

So, maybe the reconciliation, the understanding it, really comes in the last line of the quote:
"and to make you into the person you were MEANT to be."

God has a plan for me, for all of us. Sometimes I forget that and sometimes I struggle with believing it, but in my heart I know it's true. That plan is to make us into the people we were meant to be. And the only way to find the person I AM MEANT TO BE is to experience it all - good and bad, pain and joy.

Perhaps looking at it that way will help me find peace in the hard times and greater joy in the good ones. And perhaps it will help me be more forgiving of those who hurt me or leave me... (hmm, I'll have to think about that one a little more).

But for now I'll try to allow myself to be comforted in the fact that life, as I know it, is all a part of God's plan - to make me into who I am meant to be!