This morning I sit with my computer on my lap and my chocolate lab, Hazel nuzzling next to me on the couch (I know I’m a bad mother – she’s just so cute).

Anyway, I knew what I was going to write about today. I typed notes into my phone last night at midnight.

Only just now I opened an e-mail from my college friend “Kiki.” I had to share her words because they capture so much of what I feel as well.

Kiki writes:

So anyway, I was thinking about eons ago when we were sitting on the beach after I broke up with my college sweet heart…life always seems to come full circle doesn’t it…only now we have sooooo much to lose…..that day on the beach you said to me “let him go if he returns it was meant to be”…..I’ve come to hate all “those sayings”…..God doesn’t give you more than you can handle, when one door closes another opens, it wasn’t meant to be, you are so strong….some days I want to
just look at people and say “shut the $)&@ up, you have no idea what I am going thru and I don’t need your two cents comments”……this brings me to Max Lucado’s thought for the day:

Don’t get angry. Don’t be upset; it only leads to
trouble. Psalm 37:8

“Anger. It’s easy to define: the noise of the soul.
Anger. The unseen irritant of the heart. Anger. The relentless invader of
silence….
The louder it gets the more desperate we become….
Some of you
are thinking….you don’t have any idea how hard my life has been. And you’re
right, I don’t. But I have a very clear idea how miserable your future will be
unless you deal with your anger.
X-Ray the world of the vengeful and behold the
tumor of bitterness: black, menacing, malignant. Carcinoma of the spirit. It’s
fatal fibers creep around the edge of the heart and ravage it. Yesterday you
can’t alter, but your reaction to,yesterday you can. The past you cannot change,
but your response to your past you can.”

“Kiki’s” e-mail reminded me of another time a friend quoted me in our twenties. She said to me not too long ago, “Remember you said God never gives us more than we can handle.”

I was like what???? Did I say that???? And in my twenties no less after just losing both of my parents?? Much like “Kiki” I had no desire to hear that.

Only they were my words being recounted to me. So instead all I could do is reflect and be both amazed and disappointed about how very strong my faith was despite great loss and how weak it can be today.

All I could do is remember that faith held anger and bitterness at bay when I was just a young woman without a mother or a father.

All I could do is remember that “God never sends us more than we can handle.” And that when it seems as though he does…he sends us friends to remember that we can by telling us what we don’t want to hear.

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