Dealing with Life's Difficult Moments.

One of the things I'm often asked to talk about is about dealing with life's difficult moments. So, here we go... if you know me at all.... if I can share from personal experience(s) - I try to. I've found over the years that it helps others connect better.

I was asked specifically: "Camey? The last ten years of your life especially are like something one would read in a book. How can you say if you never receive another blessing you're blessed beyond measure and richer than rich?" Okay... So how can I?

The last ten years have been the worst of the worst and the best of the best all thrown in and mixed up together. Through all of life's ups and downs and twists and turns... God has been there. He has been my refuge. I have learned that there are no arms better. There is no love stronger. There is no bond tighter. There is no relationship more important.

One day when daddy was needing a bath... I had the privilege of telling him he was just going to have to get over my bathing him. The nurse could not do it alone given daddy's health at that moment. Daddy was mad at me. I was his daughter... I was not suppose to be bathing him.. taking care of him... He asked me, "Cam? When did I give up control?" I then reminded him of the years when I was ill (trading places takes on a whole new meaning here) - he told me numerous times over that my not being able to do something for myself was another person's opportunity to receive a blessing by doing it for me. That we never have the ultimate control that we think we do. So, I repeated back to him what he had said to me. . And we laughed.

Why laugh? Was that laughter inappropriate given the circumstances? No... not at all. He was mad at someone whom he had cried many many tears with years before when she was lying in a hospital bed not able to move from the neck down. Now.. here was that same person being able to bathe him.. take care of him.. at his times of greatest physical needs. The most basic of basic needs just as that person had known herself. As I had known myself.....

During the years that I was ill, daddy would often say to me, "You know, God is teaching me that as much as I think I can take care of you.. make it all better... save you... I can't." And I could not make it all better or save him either. I wasn't suppose to. That was not my place as it was not his either.

We were created for God... He is the Only One who can truly save any of us. It is only the depths of His love that even in the midst of the most difficult moments can make one be filled with joy and laugh. Pain can rip out our hearts to such a degree that we think we will never be the same again. And honestly, when pain comes - it means we are to be changed - stretched. We are given the opportunity to look to Him, and say, "I will trust You even when it does not make sense."

God is bigger than any and all circumstances. And when we can come to grips with that...

We can dance when the rain comes in our bare feet and sing His praise with arms wide open even to a song we don't like the beat of.

Are you able to dance today.. this moment?

Are your arms wide open or are they closed not willing to be unclenched?