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Life is full of disappointment. The older I get, the more I am learning this.
At sixteen, I learned that things don’t always turn out OK. At 19, missing the Summer B-Bash and my first and only chance to see Ricky Martin shake his bon-bon (oh, wait that song wasn’t even out yet, I don’t think), I learned that I wouldn’t always get what I wanted. At 25, I learned all is never fair in love or war. At 30, I realized good things don’t last forever. At 3 … —perhaps I should stop aging myself.
The thing is, life is full of disappointments. I used to think they were all about God punishing me for some known and unknown sin I’d forgotten to repent for. I’d waste my time in so many attempts to be 100 percent good and drown in self-loathing each time I succeeded in failing. Nevertheless, the bad times would come.
But as cliched as it sounds (and as cliched as that is), you just can’t have good without bad. I wouldn’t know who my true friends were if I hadn’t been abandoned and betrayed by those who weren’t. I’ve learned to appreciate what I have after losing what I had. The sweet sound of encouragement resonates that much more after the slap of cruelty.
Taken from Joanna Lueck's blog
As much as we want to receive beauty for ashes (one of my favorite Crystal Lewis songs), sometimes the beauty is in the ashes. One of the best books I’ve ever read was The Kite Runner. It took me a good three years to read the book; I cried almost every minute of it. And I couldn’t even bring myself to watch the movie. But the story told in that book—how the words were crafted—was so painfully beautiful to me. That’s just how good literature, movies, art is. The heart-wrenching stuff is what often moves us most. Sunshine is that much special after a storm. And God is in the rain.
