This Side of Invisible

I recently posted on Facebook: Life is hard. The end. Seriously. The details in each individual's life don't even have to be known for us to have a little compassion and realize that life is hard for all of us. There is always another trial around the corner. However, life is beautiful too. I dare say, it is more beautiful than anything else it can be, will be, is. Yes, it sometimes takes great effort to see the beauty beyond the thick fog that trials and hardship can lay before us, but it is possible. Focus on the light, focus on the love. There is beauty all around. Find it. Here's the thing, it's not just the beauty that gets lost in the fog of trials, but, sadly, the people do too.   On another blog, a friend commented that she hopes her daughter, and who her daughter truly is, doesn't get lost in the school evaluation process.  I've been there and done that and it is valid concern.  Four out of the five children in my home have been through rigorous t...

Every mother has an idea of what 'hard labor' is.  As does every father.  Each having their own ideas of what 'labor' is and at what level it become hard or difficult. I certainly have had my ideas about what hard labor is and my ideas have progressed over the years.  From having to vacuum with a machine much bigger than my seven-year-old self, to mowing the lawn, to running in the horrid, humid Indiana summer (for an entire mile!), to working in the Indiana corn fields in that awful humidity, to working the broiler at Burger King, to walking in uphill in a blizzard to get to my freshman psych class in Idaho, to working with emotionally disturbed children and mentally and physically disabled adults, to actual labor giving birth to my first son, to more actual labor raising him through those first years while carrying twins, to even more labor raising 3 boys under 3 and being pregnant yet again and then having four children under 4, to years down the road having my hus...