The Sad Times

I just recently (like today) had a huge epiphany. 

I am an extrovert!

Okay, I didn't just realize that.  I have been an extrovert since I came out of the womb, just ask  my parents.

What I did just today realize, is that the hardest thing about this whole school, studying, writing thing I am trying to do is that I have to do it by myself.  That is REALLY, REALLY hard for this extrovert!  

I am lonely, lonelier than I have been in a really long time.  And I have to be, because this is something I have to do by myself.  I can't be social AND get 200 pages of Christian history read.  Something has to give and, as is often the case when God is asking you to do something, the thing that has to go is the one thing I love.  

But it's hard.  It's harder when Erik travels.  It's harder when the kids are home.  It's harder when my other activities are cancelled for things like spring break.  It's just hard.  Some weeks are harder than others, and this was a really hard week.

I feel foolish, because I know so many people are going through things far harder than I am right now.  Loved ones have died, bad news has been delivered, kids have been critically ill, jobs have been lost, homes have burned.  If you are one of those people, please know you are in my thoughts and prayers.  

But it doesn't always take great tragic loss to be hurting.  Sometime we just hurt.  For nameless, faceless, silly reasons we hurt.  And I want to validate that too.  When things are just off and you don't know why, when you want to smile, but instead you cry.  When people ask you what's wrong and you have no words because you honestly don't know.  You just hurt.

That's where God comes in.   He is there for you.  No matter what is going on in your life, he is there.  He loves you and he will carry you through, through the tragic times and simply the sad times.  He knows you and he loves you, even when you can't put into words what is breaking your heart, he knows.  He gets it, he loves you and he wants to help.  So turn to him.  In the devastating times and in just the sad times.