Seasons of Love...

Growing up, I frequently sang a solo in church called "Life is hard but God is good". It was a song my dad always favored me singing. The lyrics replay in my mind frequently...."Life is hard, the world is cold. You're barely young and then you're old. Every falling tear is always understood, life is hard but God is good."  There is a YouTube video being forwarded on Facebook that some people may or may not have watched. It features a lesbian who discusses "coming out of the closet" and how hard it was for her. But that was not the point of her discussion. She said all of us have our closets to come out of...all of us have our hard times. We do not  have the right to judge someone else's hard time. We are not able to say "my hard time is harder than theirs".  My family has had some very hard times over the last 10 years. Hard.  Brad and I have had our hard  times as newlyweds with financial difficulties, home improvements needs...

so many facebook posts and new stories lately have been breaking my heart... **the young teen, Devin, from Port Clinton, who has brain cancer and chemo isn't working **a friend of ours (and newlywed) from Indiana who just found out her NEW husband has leukemia **a friend of mine who's young son cut the tip of his finger off and could possibly lose it **a friend who's boyfriend got burned pretty badly while in another state **so many more sicknesses, deaths, and hardships that are affecting friends and family, and community members So often, to try and make the affected person feel better, we say "I'll pray for you"...or "You're in my thoughts".....I got to thinking...when you say those words, do you really mean it?  I've grown up in a Christian family and those words to me started to seem like a cookie cutter answer to people who tell you their problems.   Our family has been through trials I would not want any other family ...

There have been so many times where if something didn't happen at that exact moment, I would never have know something else was going on.  Example...my husband and I are doing some aesthetic work in the house, and he went down to the "scary" basement this morning to get the paint.  He came upon a couple inches of backed up sewer on the basement floor!!  Nothing like waking up to the smell of fresh "caca".  A few hours later, and it was all cleaned up...thanks to the hard work of Brad. Now, let me backtrack to yesterday.  I was reading my old emails, and came across one from my grandmother, who passed away in August.  These were her exact words, " I know things will work out for the best but I know right now those words seem not so good.... [Joyce Meyers] said while we are sitting around mourning about what has happened God is already planning the next step for you...  Better said   ..... He knows the future, the plans he has for you an...