Actually, I really try to refrain from even speaking about my feelings in person.
But tonight, seems to be the exception.
I've been feeling cheated.
Feeling cheated out of knowing my daddy better.
Some nights like tonight, I look at a dad and daughter shopping together full of envy, thinking "that should be me". Then occasionally, my mind spirals into a dark abyss of self-pity. With thoughts like:
My father was never able to attend my high school graduation ceremony. He didn't get to drop me off at college for the first time. He can't communicate to anyone let alone his grandchildren he had been dreaming of for years before their birth.
Everyday my heart is broken, but yet at the end of the day God somehow restores it.
When the pain of the reality of ALS sets in, I remind myself of something: Day in and day out, I am told of how much of a testimony of Christ my father is and our family is. I would never be as close to my family as I am today if my father hadn't gotten sick. My faith in Christ's redeeming love would be hardly existent. The testimony that my father gives me everyday is remarkable. I believe that God has used my father's illness to do so much good. ALS has changed his life, and the lives of our family. ALS is a blessing.
I am blessed beyond measure. I have been blessed to know what ALS is. I have been blessed to have a father who loves me immensely. I have been blessed to take care of my gradually dying father. I have been blessed to know pain and hardship.
So on the days when I am filled with unspeakable pain, I realize that this is my life. It's all a part of God's plan for me. There IS beauty in pain. And when you can finally decipher the pain, and realize that there is beauty in it, you learn to praise God through it.
Blessings- Laura Story
What if my greatest disappointments or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy
What if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are your mercies in disguise
