When dreams die

This picnic in early days with my mom does not show the fact that my Dad was facing cancer surgery that week. We were able to be with mom during a tough stretch in their lives.

Thanks to Tim and Donna for a sweet visit yesterday. They have returned to town after an attempt to move back home to the south that did not work out. They were on the pulpit committee that led me from the south the the west 24 years ago, and sadly they observed that dream go dreadfully awry when personal relationships fell apart and our time with them was short.

As we have aged we reflect upon the truth that our dissapointments are often God's appointments, which is a very old but useful quote. We hope every decision and change in our lives will yield great joy and success but life brings us down when we thought everything would come up roses.

These friends are in a rebuilding phase, as I have been before, and we just agreed that God is with us and we are blessed in the journey even when things do not go according to plan, and friendships are one of the reasons we can survive and go forward. I wanted to remind them of that truth, and to assure them that the pain of our early relationships in my families bumpy road were replaced with other joys and successes that came later. Its called life.