I've noticed some people are truly handicapped over the missing pieces in their lives. Whatever is not there—something hoped for but not realized—many become obsessed with it. It controls their thought life, and it keeps them from enjoying or appreciating the good things they do have. What about you? Would that be true of you?

I remember talking with a friend who has been married quite a few years and has always wanted children, but she has not been able to have her own. That's a painful missing piece, and she was sharing the pain with me. But even though she recognizes an important piece is missing, she hastened to add: "But, Mary, I have so much to be thankful for. My life is still full and meaningful," and she began to recite the good things—the pieces that are not missing from her life.

I said to her, "Do you realize how unusual you are? While you acknowledge a key piece is missing from your life, and is likely to always be missing, you are focused on what is not missing.” I've known her for many years, and I can tell you she has never moaned and groaned about this missing piece. While she has felt sorrow and pain over it, she accepts that no one has everything, and life is full of missing pieces.

Have the missing pieces of your life become so overwhelming you cannot see or appreciate what you do have? For ten years I allowed what I thought was a major missing piece in my life to control me. I felt I had to be married for life to be complete, so I was consumed with pursuing and finding the right person to marry. I've shared my testimony many times before of how that obsession with finding the missing piece led me away from the Lord, away from biblical principles, into a self-focused and sinful life.

What I've come to learn—and am still learning—is that instead of being controlled by the missing pieces, I can be thankful for them. If that sounds a little "too good to be true," let me assure you I don't live on another planet, and I have the same feelings and emotions and struggles as everyone else. And I emphasize I am learning this principle of being thankful for the missing pieces. But as I've started to grasp this truth, I've found such freedom and contentment.

I'd like to share a poem with you, which really helped me start down this road of being thankful for the missing pieces. I first read it several years ago, and I have it written in my prayer book as a reminder of this important biblical principle—to be thankful for the missing pieces. The poem uses old-fashioned words, but the truth is still very relevant:

An easy thing, O power Divine,

To thank Thee for these gifts of Thine!

For summer's sunshine, winter's snow,

For hearts that kindle, thoughts that glow;

But when shall I attain to this:

To thank Thee for the things I miss?

For all young fancy's early gleams,

The dreamed-of joys that still are dreams,

Hopes unfulfilled, and pleasures known

Through others' fortunes, not my own,

And blessings seen that are not given,

And ne'er will be - this side of heaven.

Had I, too, shared the joys I see,

Would there have been a heaven for me?

Could I have felt Thy presence near

Had I possessed what I held dear?

My deepest fortune, highest bliss,

Have grown, perchance, from things I miss.

Sometimes there comes an hour of calm;

Grief turns to blessing, pain to balm;

A Power that works above my will

Still leads me onward, upward still;

And then my heart attains to this:

To thank Thee for the things I miss.

-Thomas Wentworth Higginson[1]

When I first read this poem, I began to ask myself, "Where would you be today if you had everything you wanted, if there were no missing pieces in your life?” And it was as though God drew back a curtain to let me see how having everything I wanted could have been disastrous for me. Why? Because I might have been lulled into thinking I was self-sufficient, and I may have never seen my true needy state.