Shadows are darkest when the sun shines brightest

*last blog for a bit on Rach and cancer*


It's an uplifting thought that as things seem bad that's only because there is a lightness to contrast with it. If you only knew bleak then bleak would not seem bleak it would appear only normal, but good might also appear bleak with nothing to contrast it too. I must have known joy to understand what suffering is. Without the contrast of the two the joy would be lost. 

I read the first half of Job this week and it has affected me how passionate Job was when everything got taken away, sounds obvious but he didn't rationalise or try to stay calm, he cried out for God to end his life, he got angry. Then rather than accept duff advice politely, he argues passionately and aggressively for what he knows to be right. He is not passive. It is sometimes great to be placid - I'm good in a crisis, I don't get too emotional - but It's important to be driven and to get angry sometimes. To never be arrogant but also to never think yourself too small in your own eyes with regards to your opinions and thoughts. I am confident that Job was more appreciative of all he had after losing it, suffering and then having it returned but he didn't just sit back and let it happen, he got angry then he got appreciative. He understood blessings more because he also understood loss.

I don't blog often but I think I am going to start to move on from the subject of suffering as it makes me sound a bit depressed which all things considered I'm really not. I can chose in the brightness to look at my shadow or to look at the sun. I've probably spent too long looking at my shadow, time to look into the sunshine x


To end today here's an excerpt  from a quote my sister put as a comment on my last blog (full quote still there)

"My hope for the future comes from my experience in the past. I really understand that I’m a survivor. I have exercised my adulthood to the point that however stretched it was, it did not break…there is in me the drive to live, and to live well, but most of all the drive to live to the best of myself. Hope is God’s grace today, it’s not a buy-off about tomorrow."


 quote from Joan Chittister