A Horrible Start to a New Year

You know what they say about making plans, right? Take all of what you know that is negative, apply that to my day, and you'll have the start of my 2017. So much so that I decided to take some profile shots of myself for future reference. I mean, when your day is already a mess, why not go ahead and take unflattering shots of yourself, right?
 
I am trying my hardest to not let it get the best of me, so despite all the no-fun things that have happened today, I have managed to catch up on laundry (except getting it all folded and put away) and cleaned the laundry room. I've also taken down the last hints of Christmas. It's actually really sad to me, taking down the Christmas Tree and all the pretty lights. Christmas is a joyful, wonderful time of year and packing it away brings out the "life goes too fast" feelings and the "now it's time to real life" again. The last three days I have been so sick I could hardly stand up. I'm not sure what I had going on, but it was debilitating. Today has been hard, but I am feeling better from *that* so I'll take it.
 
I've embarked on a new Bible Study/Reading plan for this year. Not only is it a nice devotional each day but it will get me through the Bible completely by the end of the year. It's an exciting thing for me to look forward too each day. Time to sit and read and engage in God's beautiful word. I think it's a good next step for figuring out who I am in this crazy life. You can get the Bible I'll be using here. It's on sale right now too, so Bonus!
 
I firmly believe that God lays things upon our hearts and minds with the intent to help us find the way we should go, or help us to see the answer to something else. For a couple weeks, the same Bible passage has been shown before my eyes several times. I was going to talk about it before now, but the time wasn't right. Today though, it is glaringly obvious that it is something I can use in my life right now.

James 1: 2-4
 
 2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

The first time this showed up to me it was in a video I was watching about how to take time each day to study/pray/meditate/think/breathe each day. I didn't think a lot of it until a few days later when my Great Uncle posted the same passage on Facebook. Then I started thinking about it a lot.

God doesn't promise us that life will be each. Or that being a Christian will be easy. Or fill in the blank will be easy. In fact, it's quite the opposite. He tells us here that we will have times of trouble and that we will come head on to many problems and hard times in our lives. Like today, when 5,320,596,983,293 things everything has seemed to go poorly. I'm not just talking about little unimportant things either. Relationship problems with my husband and mother, parenting struggles, friendship hurtfulness, and the likes to vaguely name a couple. He also tells us that this is His perfect plan. Testing our faith produces perseverance. Testing our faith teaches us to keep looking to Him for answers and not giving up when we go through hard times or face troubles.

Just keep swimming, Caitlin. Just keep swimming.