What else can go wrong? How much worse can it get? What now?

I do not believe we have a God that punishes us when things get tough. I do believe we have a loving and forgiving Father, a caring Brother who gave His life for our sins, and a Spirit that gives us the most amazing thoughts and words to live by. I do believe our God not only walks with us in times of trouble and strife but He sometimes carries us though the crisis. When faced with adversity why do we turn on God and say “What did I ever do to deserve this?” or “Why me?” why are we looking to blame God when something goes wrong in OUR plan for OUR life? Well that’s an easy one, it’s not our plan for our life it’s Gods plan for our life. And if what we want and what God knows is best for us, is the same well then, that’s great, but it doesn’t always work that way. Many times God’s plan is no where near how we plan our life. Rather than being in dialog with God and asking how our life should be, we decide we know what is best for us. We don’t converse with God, we dictate how we want things. We don’t always listen.

I feel our time would be better spent thanking God for the good in life. Now don’t tell me you have nothing to be thankful for in your present condition. Plenty of people are worse off than you are right now. Maybe your life is not going the way you want it to go right now, if your health is your trouble, look at the young mother in the terminal cancer ward. Your relationship giving you problems? The Army wife with young kids would love to have your problems. Are your children giving you gray hairs, tell your troubles to the parents who just lost their only child. Somebody is always worse off than you. Should that make you feel any better? Well yeah, when you concentrate on others, suddenly you don’t feel so bad.

That does not explain why bad things happen to good people, why some are given more burdens to carry through this life. Sometimes you just have to trudge through the clouds and the rain and storms, or in some cases a hurricane to appreciate all the good in your life.

Or maybe it’s the devil causing you to stumble and question your faith. I once heard something about the devil tempting you the most, the closer you got to God.

I think a gratitude journal is can be you new best friend. Now this may sound silly but at one time when my kids were small and we were going through a rough patch we had a happy book. Any time something made someone happy we recorded it in the book, with words, pictures or drawings. And each week we read the book together going over what each of us enjoyed. So each spend some time recording what makes you happy and things you are grateful for. Get an old notebook or a pretty new journal it really doesn’t matter. Spend 15 minutes each day recording things that made you happy or that you are grateful for. I like to be able to go back and see the good in my life, when I start reading and then add to it I feel like I am not quite so down. On my worst days I may be only able to add simple things such as I got out of bed on time, went for a walk or enjoyed an uninterrupted bubble bath or even someone smiled at me.

The line from this song was stuck in my head all day yesterday “I will raise you up on eagles wings…..hold you in the palm of my hand.” That was my sign, things will not be easy but they will work out! How do I know this is my sign? I just do! And you too WILL know your sign.