Change

Change can be good. Change can be bad. One thing is guaranteed in life, however. That is that things will change. My son will be back for four days before he goes to Iraq for the year. My daughter's husband will be out of the military and they are coming home for a short time before moving on to a new place. My husband is back in school getting his masters. And the story I was plotting got eaten by my computer when I had to reformat my hard drive.

Any one of those things could be stressful or even devastating to someone. But something I have learned and tried to instill in my children is that life is a cycle. What you go through now will eventually pass and things will get better--only to have things go bad again and then eventually get better again. The psalmast put it great when he said, Hold on my child, joy comes in the morning, it's darkest just before the light...(my paraphrase).

We get so tangled up in the world sometimes with problems, kids problems, relationship problems, bill problems, (the three biggies they say affect every married couple), peer pressure, parental problems, (For you younger guys), that we forget that these trials will help us by refining us into what God wants us to be.

As gold or silver is melted, the gunk comes to the top to make the metal more pure--we're like that...these trials is the gunk in us. God uses many ways to refine us--but we need to learn from the trial or we will just have the same trial again. That doesn't mean if you learn from one trial, you wont' have others. As soon as God refines you in one area and you think, thank you Jesus, I am done with that, things have gotten better...God opens up another area in your life to reveal where you need fixing. OR, guess what guys, sometime we go through those trial so OTHER people can see and be fixed.

So, hold on my child, darkness is just for the night and it's always darkest before the dawn, but joy will come in the morning.