Changing Through Trials

I know I have been MIA a little from here.

I feel as though I have just been hanging on, grasping for air at times really. The holidays are really hard, and for some reason this one is proving very hard for me. I don't know why, but it is.

My two girls keep me busy and for that I'm so grateful, but it's in the quiet moments my heart and soul are very heavy.

Some days I just wish someone would show up at my door and take my girls, even for just an hour so that I can cry and release all these built up emotions.

But knowing me I wouldn't allow it, and I would insist that all is well.

There are so many times as of late that I just can't process that Miles really left us, or even sometimes that he really lived on this Earth with me.

Did I really hold my sweet little 17 month old red head daughter in my arms for her to say her final goodbye to her older brother?

My heart and mind will never forget these moments, yet they seem to not want to recognize their reality. But this pictures confirms it's reality.

I don't know why after two years, I still can't understand this all.

Some days, weeks and months I can, yet some hours and minutes I can't at all.

Lately I have heard of so many people's trials. 

I have even been witnessing many around me.

Trials are such a hard and difficult thing for not only the people going through them, but those watching as well.

My heart aches, truly, as I witness and hear of so many.

Why do we have to suffer? Why do we have to hurt?

I'm not convinced that we will ever fully understand the Why in this life.

But I do know that if it weren't for trials we would not be who we are and who we are becoming.

As I watch others endure trials that I may never be able to endure, I find strength, hope and even love in a depth that would never be should it not be for the fire of the trial at hand.

As odd and as hard as it is to say, I am grateful for this trial that I am, and may always be facing.

I know there will be more trials in my life. I don't get a "skip trials pass," although I would love one!

But through this trial I have felt the fire of my refiner, forging me into a new person.

One that I wouldn't otherwise be if I didn't feel the intense heat and scorching of the fire and each  swing of the hammer molding me and shaping me into something and someone new.

I have felt this change all the way from the depth of my soul to the outward skin that covers body.

I have changed, and I continue to change into something better and new each day that I allow my maker to make modifications to me as I allow him and work with him to become what he has envisioned for me to become.

So why trials? Why me?

Why not? Because God loves me and each of you so much that he trusts us with hard things.

He trusts us to trust in him, to allow him to help mold us into something we wouldn't otherwise allow ourselves to become if it weren't for facing and enduring hard things.

So here is to becoming what he has in store for each of us by trusting in him.