THAT WHICH DOES NOT KILL US MAKES US STRONGER...

I don't even know where that quote comes from but it seems so true.  I used to say it in high school (but never said it like I believed it) trying to convince myself that I would survive, along with my motto "black is my soul"...High school was my own hell but that is another blog.  Thank God I made it is all I can say...

When the storms of life happen, you think I can't make it through, I just can't do it, my life is over.  Somehow long after it is done and gone you look back and say wow I made it through that one.  And sometimes like I do, you laugh yourself silly thinking about how very insanely bad it was and did that really happen? And it seems life contains a trillion billion of those storms.  You think your problem is unique and no one understands what you're going through, but somewhere, somehow, in some part of the world at some moment in history, it happened (or something worse) to someone else who thought the same very thing.

"No man is an island" (another good quote.)

Well, I don't know about you but I tend to view others wrongly sometimes and think they have it all together and they never have to go through problems such as A, B, or C like I do.  Then I find out about their life and think that I sure wouldn't want to go through what they do and I guess I'll take my problems over theirs.  At least I have come to know the same problems well and nothing surprises me anymore.  Kinda like my area of expertise because others say wow, how do you deal with that one? and I say oh I'll write a book.

Really, I have yet to meet anyone who has it all together.  No one has a perfect life, body, family, kids, job, home.  Oh, we wish we could no matter what the cost, but sad to say it doesn't exist and we envy in others what they have attained that we want so badly.  But their journey is not meant for us and we have blessings and strengths to count as our own.

Either way, you never know that what you overcame and lived to tell about can help or encourage another who is going through something similar and feels they don't have the strength to survive.  It could be something small like a phone call, online chat, facebook post or email and you may never even know the good that comes from your pain until years later.

From Psalm 40:  "I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry.  He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.  He put a new song in my mouth, a hymm of praise to our God.  Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord."

And for all the times that I felt so alone, bare, isolated, homeless, jobless, sad, lost, full of things that rob my life of the joy and no answer in sight, from Psalm 42:  "Why are you so downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?  Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God."

In that Psalm, David writes the same phrase 3 times.  I think he was really trying to remind himself in whatever he was going through to not give up and pouring out his guts to the God he followed his whole life.  Kinda like I did when I was in high school.  See, thousands of years later he is still inspiring others.

So don't give up and you can too.