Life is Good

For the last few months, I have turned more reflective of the past 5 years and what I have done, where I was, and what I went through. And really the one question we all ask, why me, why my child, and plain just why? I think that this is a good thing, as I'm figuring out what it is really that I have gained and learned from my trials.

During the last 5 years if any one started to talk about "enduring your trials" or "trials" period, I would tune them out. I didn't need to hear how to live through my trials, I was living a nightmare. I was enduring one day at a time, sometimes one hour at a time. Looking back I wonder really were the 5 years went. It went by so fast, that I can't believe it is here that my kids are where they are at. Did I really just live 5 years, it feels more like 6 months.

Now that I am in the "reflective" period, I am able to look at the things I have learned and count them closer to blessings in my life. From knowing my Heavenly Father loves me and knows me personally, he truly cares about me. Did I know this before, yes I did, but now I KNOW this. I don't know how many times I get comments like "wow, I don't have it that bad". I know this is weird, but if my trials help you to see how good you got it, I'm glad! I am amazed at how we are all looking to relate to someone, to know that someone understands us. At work, I meet a lot of people struggling with their own health and I'm glad to be able to understand them and that they know someone has been there, done that and holding a hand for them on the other side of the trial.

Living through a trial is a lot like taking a hike in the mountains. Your surroundings change as you walk. You may start out with lots of grass and open fields, but the higher you climb the more dense the trees become. Maybe a fog rolls in or a cloud cover changes what you see. And then you get to the top of the mountain, and you can see where you came from and around you. But the hike is not over, for you still have to go down the mountain to your car. It is all down hill relatively speaking, but not always there are still smaller hills to go up and down with. On the way up you had the morning sun and cooler weather, but on the way down it's afternoon and hotter you need to drink more water.

Just like that hike, sometimes you can see the trial before you, like us we knew when I was 20 weeks pregnant that we were going to have problems. We could foresee some of it, we could see the top of the mountain, but we didn't fully understand what we were going to see along the way. We could only imagine what the view from the top was going to look like and we wanted to see it. But as we got going on that hike, the top of the mountain seemed so far away, was it getting farther away? We had unexpected turns and hills that were more steep than we thought at first. I can honestly say that, though not necessarily at the top, I'm at a spot that I can see the valley and where I came from. It is amazing and beautiful, did I really climb that? I can see more bumps along the way, but I don't feel so blogged down by the surrounding fog. Life is turning beautiful again. And I want to help others to see the beauty that is around them.

I see the blessings from my "hike" the knowledge that I didn't know I was gaining, the friends, and the support from others. And I learned that others were on my hike, I just didn't realize they were there. They were also learning along the way. For me life has turned beautiful again. Does that mean that life is perfect. LOL NO! But life is good, my surroundings are good! I think I'm almost to the point of calling the last 5 years a blessing instead of a trial!