Can You Make Sense Of It All?

All your life you hear the words, "these are the best years of your life". Everyone saying it sincerely means it at that moment, but it maybe should be every year is the best year of your life, at least if you're really living a life that is.

Now, I'm only a late 30's girl, so I don't have a ton of life wisdom to stand on here, but I'll give it a whirl anyway. As my brother would say, back in the day, in high school, we were all assured that those were the best years of our lives. We were to really live them to the full because after that, it was down hill. After high school came responsibility, college, work, real relationships and all that other non-sense. Then in college, I heard a familiar thing, those very same words. These were the best years of my life.

Again.

Next, it was the late 20's after college. Those were the best years of our lives.

Well, here I am in the late 30's and I'll say, each cluster of years was at that time, some of the best of my life, but the 30's are far different.

These are the years that life is lived out in a startling intensity. The joys are beyond measure of anything I'd ever anticipated. On the flip side, the sorrows are just as gripping.

As is the custom for Thanksgiving time, I've been reflecting and taking note of all the things I'm thankful for. The list stretches on and on, from the tiny like a Friday night glass of wine, a warm home, to the huge like plentiful friends and relative good health.

On a blog I read, on Thanksgiving day she challenged us to be thankful for the hard things, the things we don't understand, the things that hurt and rip at our hearts. She has since taken the entry down for some editing and clarification, but I'd still say, go visit Bring The Rain--the link is on the side--and give it a read. She is a true example of a Christ follower.

So, in the spirit of her post, I'll list a few of my own.

Dear Lord, I am thankful for the blessing of Autism in my family. I am thankful for cancer that is ripping apart lives all around me. I'm thankful that my best friends all live in other parts of the country. I am thankful for birth parents that fail their children.

That gives you the idea. It's sort of the same as saying that you will praise Him in the storm. You will live by faith in this life.

And so it goes, these days in my late 30's, and I claim them as the best days yet. Their sheer intensity and raw emotions are extreme and exhausting, but each night when I finally fall into my bed almost sleeping before my head hits the pillow, I am great-full for it all. For without them, I would hardly know I was alive.