Every day

Today is Indigenous Peoples' Day, Breast Cancer Awareness Day, Internataional Disaster Reduction Day, National M&M Day, US Navy Birthday, and 31 other national and international holidays.

A single date can have so many attachments to it.  In grade school, Oct 13th was celebrated as Columbus Day, but as history has revealed Columbus not only "sailed the ocean blue" discovering America, but he also brutalized and enslaved the indigenous people who had welcomed him.  

It is interesting to me that a single event can highlight both good and evil, joy and sadness, hope and disappointment.  From the garden of Eden, when the first humans were deceived by a snake (Satan's lie) and the law of God was transgressed. Mankind was then able experience comprehend truth and error, transgression and forgiveness, joy and sadness, birth and death.  These opposites continue throughout our lives. 

We are wounded and are healed, we laugh and we cry, we love and long for, no wonder this life is such a roller coaster.  

My lifetime roller coaster experiences:

- Best friends and moves

- Choices and consequences

- Fear and Faith

- Mission punctuated with longing

- Motherhood without giving birth

- Mundane jobs tasks followed by employment that stretches me

- No broken bones or torn ligaments then metastatic cancer

- Parenting then empty nesting

- Participation and retreating

- Spiritual enlightenment and spiritual slumber

I seek to be consistent, organized, steady, upbeat, and true; but slide into chaos, discouragement, inconsistency, and self-doubt.  It is helpful for me to remember that although I seek to become perfectly happy, life is not a gradual steady incline of goodness. Strong winds grow steady trees. Stress turns charcoal into diamonds. Tests of faith build testimonies of truth.

"...all things work together for our good to them that love God..."  Romans 8:28

Struggles and disappointments are reminders to remember God, love Him, and trust Him, every day.