TRAGEDY HAS STRUCK ... FOR WHAT IS THERE TO BE THANKFUL?

Life is laced with the fault-lines of unpredictability. 

At the drop of a hat, disaster can strike. 

Everyone encounters death, heartbreak, devastating illnesses, job instability, and financial crisis. 

Perhaps it’s a personal situation that arises and then knocks you down. 

Maybe it’s the stress of your job that keeps you up too late at night.

Whatever it may be, we all experience the whirlwind of unpredictability at times.

I will not give you the litany of my own griefs.  

When your heart has been cut out of you, someone counting off their own woes is just salt in an open wound.

But when it happens to you, you may feel:

            Consumed
            Shattered
            Lost
            A Total Mess 
            Devastated
            Like a Failure
 
And when our lives feel like they are spinning out of control, 

it’s not always easy to think of what may be secretly waiting for us on the other side of our Valley of the Shadow. 
 

It’s difficult to feel hope or see the bigger picture.

At those times some talk of the Silence of Heaven ... as if.

 Pain never whispers or is silent.  

It shouts.  

And sometimes what we think of as a Silence to our pleas to Heaven is but a silent nod 

that there are Paths of Blood we must walk to go where ...


We learn the lessons we would learn no other way.

We teach those lessons to those who observe how we respond to what they will later encounter themselves.

We have hurtful walls we have erected around our hearts demolished by pain, anguish, doubt, and despair. 

We learn humility in an area where we thought we were healthy ... but were anything but.

 Prosperity is a window to a bright world.  

Tragedy is a mirror showing us who we really are.

What we have lost, we have lost.  

What we gain from the tragedy is up to us and our responses to the pain we wish would just go away.

No matter how tough you are, it is very easy to feel vulnerable, confused, or lost.

When things go terribly wrong, 

it is hard to feel anything but the chains of grief on your shoulders with no prison bars between which you can see the light of day.

REMEMBER:

1.) EVERYTHING HAPPENS TO US  FOR A REASON

I do not mean this as a cliche.  

It happens for the reason we assign it in our thoughts.  

In my World View, we are never alone.  

We have the Father guiding us down needful, and sometimes bloody, paths.

But that may not be your take on Life.

 Still, it is up to you to make what has happened in your life empowering or dis-empowering.  

Your thoughts can either help you or hinder you further.  

Your thoughts can either fan the flames of courage 

or stamp down whatever embers of it still remain.  

Your mind, your choice.

 2.) PAIN IS INEVITABLE; SUFFERING IS OPTIONAL

No season lasts forever ... not uplifting spring nor bitter winter.

Focus on pain and your concentration acts as a prism increasing its flames.  

Focus on a task outside of yourself no matter how simple, and the pain ebbs a bit.

There are always others worse off: focus on some small way to help them.  

Not up to helping out at a food kitchen? Phone for donations to it or another good charity. 

Your tragedy is not your whole story:

 try to make this but a small chapter of your story, headed to a healing ending.

3.) "IS" -- THE ONLY VERB YOU LIVE

This one moment is all you have.  

Is it full of pain?  

Each throb of pain is but a link in the bicycle chain of your life bringing you to healing -- 

if not of your body, then of your heart.

Are you still breathing? Of course you are. 

Then, great, you’ve just handled that moment. 

Are you ready for the next one that will bring you one step closer to engaging in your life again?

I do not have all the questions, much less all the answers to them.  

I merely hope that this has helped in some small way not to make the very thought of "Thanksgiving" a mockery.

 All of you are in my thoughts and prayers.  Roland