Why I haven't written much....

I began to blog just for a place for friends to come by and visit every once in awhile, but I haven't written much this year. It has been the most challenging year of my life faith-wise, and I feel like coming clean a bit here so that I can dust 2007 off my feet and walk forward with hope into 2008.

It has been a year of bearing and feeling so much sorrow for those around our family - the illnesses of family members, two pairs of close friends who have had the grief of losing newborn babies, friends grieving the deaths of a parent or brother, and just two days ago - the loss of a college friend and one of her children in a terrible auto accident. I am reeling a bit with this recent news, as I think I felt like maybe 2007 had so much bad news that there couldn't possibly be more.

I would like this blog to be a place of encouragement. I can usually weather tough days well, and I have a generally hopeful outlook on life, but I've been brought to a standstill by grief at so many points this year and frankly, blogging has been the last thing on my mind.

Faith is often considered a flighty, rose-colored glasses approach to life, but really, that's not faith at all - that's optimism - and before I became a Christian in college, that was the flimsy platform that I built my life on. I know it doesn't last when things get really tough. Faith is sometimes clinging to a mast in a storm, waiting and hoping for the moment when Jesus will stand up in the boat and command the wind and waves to cease. Faith is for those willing to wrestle with the hard questions, willing to acknowledge that there are things out of our control in this world, and trusting that God is trustworthy because that is simply His character and that this truth is not defined by circumstances. It is incredibly hard at times, but ultimately I bow my head and say, "You are my God. Apart from you I have nothing." And somehow, Comfort comes.

I am imagining standing on a grassy hill, looking over green fields as gray stormy clouds pelt rain down on my face. But standing with me is Jesus, and He is holding my hand.

We all have our grief to bear. But we are never alone.

Amen.