Friends...

I'm having a difficult day today. Several years ago when I had a similarly difficult day, a friend shared with me how she combats these days: she wrote miraculous things that God had done in her and her family's lives on small rocks, and placed them in a bowl in the center of their dining table. She shared how the kids would frequently pick them up and read them, and even tell their friends about the different "neat" things that God did for them. Thinking this was a great idea, I gathered the children together, and we, too, have been writing on shells (Todd and I had been collecting shells from our vacations at the shore since we met) the things God has done for us. I needed to read them again today. One of the shells simply says, "friends."

God has given me some great friends. I am privileged to have several who I know regularly pray for me, and what's really neat about these few, is that they are not afraid to speak the truth in love. Everyone needs at least one friend who is willing to do this; I am blessed with several!

OK, so the reason for my difficult day? I'm dwelling too much on what I don't have. I've been missing Todd. In the grocery store, every aisle had some reminder of him. At home, the kids have been talking and talking about Daddy. Decisions had to be made. I continue to feel so incredibly alone and lost in this world without Todd. But that's not the real problem...I don't think.

Driving home I heard these words to a Rascal Flatts song: "What hurts the most, is being so close...and never knowin' what could've been..." You may remember Danny singing this on Idol the other week, but anyway, I began to get upset with "what could've been..." and could feel the anger growing inside of me.

Several years ago one of those extraordinary friends wrote me an email, saying she could sense an anger in my words and then she asked, "How dare you get angry at a God Who loves you and is caring for you and Who created you?" Of course I denied being angry at God. Not me. Then last year another friend wrote me an email almost identical to the first. She "accused" me of being angry with God. Me? No! I love God! Yet today, well, I wonder if those friends were correct afterall. I admit, today I feel angry. It comes and goes. It comes when I focus on "what could have been" and on my great loss. It goes when I read those shells and remember that God is in control and loves me and cares for me.