To My Blog Readers:

It is a strange thing for me to think of you, the blog reader.  I process life on paper, with boxes of rumination stacked in closets and corners of more than one room in our house. I view my posts as pages of writing that I have left lying about...as if on a side table.  They are not the scribblings I immediately lock away, ashamed to even look at again myself (and certainly not intended for other eyes).  
There are no expectations for these bits I "publish", other than the idea that my reflections are common to many and will perhaps find assent in kindred spirits.

 Most recently, I posted on sorrow.  December, February and March are particularly difficult for three women I love -- as these months carry memories of the final days of painful suffering for a husband, a daughter, mother and father.  I think of my own grief as I think of theirs.  They are changed from the people they were, but God has faithfully forged beauty out of their endurance through affliction. 
 
I know they are not alone, and sorrow is not reserved for great tragedies.   
We live in a world corrupted by sin, and shadowed by death (the last enemy to be defeated).  
We do not grieve as those who have no hope ...but grieving is not a brief pause before passing on to the next thing.  It is a deep, dark, impossible time that shows God's grace BECAUSE of the immensity.

I'm thankful for those of you who have responded with love and assurances of prayer, since God promises He works through our petitions.  Somehow.  
I encourage you to not stop with me, though; I hadn't intended the post to be about me.  
All around us are human beings, painstakingly formed by God, who are feeling the next breath to be beyond them.  And sometimes, if we are honest, it is our own selves who need to be borne along to hope.

Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth;
break forth, O mountains, into singing!
For the Lord has comforted his people
and will have compassion on his afflicted.

But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me;
my Lord has forgotten me.”

Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.  

Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are continually before me.