This Easter period has seen me very quiet again. As regular readers of my blog will know, our family has been having a rather hard time of it in very recent years. Loss of both my sisters and my father, plus my 25 year old great niece just before Christmas plus other members of the family also. From a very large family, we are now down to a handful – literally.
Now, the latest is that a month ago my daughter had a severe heart attack, which she survived, followed two weeks later by my husband being taken into hospital with a bleed on the brain. Also, my niece’s partner who has cancer was told he now also has three brain tumours. It never seems to end.
The point of telling you all of this is to show we must never give up hope. We have no idea why God has chosen to take practically all of our family, but He always knows best. He has a reason for everything we aren’t always able to understand and such enormous losses so close together, is very hard to bear indeed. Very hard.
I always think of Easter as a time of new beginnings. Not just with Nature starting to burst forth with new life everywhere we look, but in our lives too. Yes, we have lost so many people we loved, but how lucky have we been to have had them in our lives, to have known their love. Many are denied such things and we recognise how blessed we have been for all these years to have had so many in our lives that were so special to us and who we were special to.
There is just now my mother of 99 years of age, my daughter, niece, great nephew and me. Five left in total. How did this happen and why so much loss to us all at once? Why not is what I say to those who ask those questions. We all have to leave at some point when our time here is done and none of us knows when that time will come.
As we move forwards with our lives, it is important to make each day count in whatever way we can. My life is, and has been, all about being a carer for several people at once for the last few years. It is exhausting, unrelenting and made much harder by the fact I am severely disabled and find it very hard to walk or do much of anything due to arthritis in every part of my body that inflames and can be quite severe. I wouldn’t change a thing though.
My life, my blog , books and social media posts have been put on a back burner for some time, but how lucky am I to have been able to manage to care for my loved ones. How lucky am I to still manage it no matter how hard.
This coming year, we must all look forwards not back. We can enjoy our memories but must not dwell on what we’ve lost, but instead be grateful for what we had. Hold those memories close and recognise how our family would want us to move forward, to live life to its fullest. My aim this year is to do as much of my work for God as I can, albeit in a reduced manner for now, but to continue to care for the family I have left in whatever way they need me.
I truly believe new beginnings are coming our way soon now and that my work for God will then start in earnest. For now though, I will do the tasks He’s put before me with being a carer to the best of my ability, just as I’ve been doing in the last five years. I urge you to do the same.
No matter how hard life is or becomes, no matter how sadness or badness in the extreme can suddenly arrive in your life, handle it as God would want you to, for they are lessons He has sent us in order to strengthen not just our earthly bodies and minds, but also our souls. It is the trials we go through in life and how we handle them that will show us and Him what we’re made of.
Without such lessons, without such trials, we’d remain as we were the day we were born and would never have learnt anything or progressed. Some of us will fail some of those trials or even all of them. Others will thrive due to them, even if they don’t think they are while enduring it all.
Life was never meant to be easy. We have schools of learning from the day we’re born till the day we die. Just as we have school terms and years for our education in world matters as children and teenagers, so we have the major school of life which nourishes our souls and makes us who we are. How we go through that school of life, if we accept every challenge thrown at us no matter how hard, how we treat others and whether we seek material things over Godly will all decide what becomes us on leaving this world.
Every day is a day to learn and achieve, every year brings new beginnings to start all over again and Easter is the most important of these new beginnings as is Pentecost that will follow afterwards. Embrace those new beginnings, leave the past where it belongs – behind you. Start life anew, make new plans, embrace every day, love and care for everyone you meet and spread love, joy, happiness and laughter wherever you can no matter how hard it is to do so some days.
Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone. Yes, my family, and maybe yours too, has lost so much, but I know much more lies ahead of all of us too, just in different ways. We still have much to offer this world and the world still has much to offer us. It is a new day, it is a new dawn, it is a new beginning. Join with Christ as He rises today and remember, your new beginning is what you make of it. I hope it brings you only peace, happiness and good health.
May God bless you and your loved ones, one and all
With love, Lorraine x
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