3 gifts of difficulty and 6 other gifts of comfort

So, today’s hunt was to find 3 gifts of difficulty…

It felt like summer today.  Record breaking temperatures around 90 degrees at the beginning of May.  There was even the sticky, humid feeling that usually doesn’t happen until the middle of June. 

It was an uncomfortable feeling.

Uncomfortable feelings can make you feel hot tension beginning to boil or give the cold-as-ice feeling freezing all words to silence.  Uncomfortable feelings are difficult.

Why does life have to be so difficult sometimes?  

Difficult situations, difficult personal battles, difficult people to love. 

And I hear as being a believer, it’s a privilege to have the gift of suffering, troubles, complications, and difficulties.

It’s difficult for me to face difficult situations and difficult people.  It’s so much easier to sweep things under the rug, ignore, turn my back…hide.

It’s so much easier to say we can hide in Christ because He holds us.  But there comes a time when God sometimes takes us OFF his lap, gives us a love pat on our back with a little nudge to move forward…into our uncomfortable zone. 

#393 “When God moves us out of our comfort zone —- into places that are way bigger than us, places that are difficult, hard, painful —- that even hurt — this is a gift.

We are being given a gift.

#394  These hard places give us the gift of intimately knowing God — in ways that would never be possible in our comfort zones.”

It’s only in the uncomfortable places that we can experience the tenderness of the Comforter.”  Ann Voskamp

Facing difficult situations is out of my comfort zone. 

If it was really possible, would you take all difficulties out of your life - right now - if God allowed…the rest of your time on this earth?

Would I?  My first reaction was, “Well yes!  Of course!”  But then I thought about it more. 

If I didn’t have difficulties, then I wouldn’t need Jesus. 

#395  It is a gift to be desperately dependent on God. 

Unashamed dependency.  

God wants us to be dependent on Him. He allows difficult times in our lives so we’ll desperately cling to Him.  

A song by the group Addison’s Road says “When my life is like a storm (in difficult situations) with rising waters…all I want is the shore”. 

To get out of the storm, the difficulty…out of the uncomfortable zone.  It’s the easy way out. 

Oh LORD, I want to always desperately depend on You…all the time.  Even though it’s harder to say this thanksgiving more than many others…

Thank you for the gift of difficulties.

Thanks to God also for these other gifts that overshadow difficulties because they reflect the glory of God…

#396 the sound of the babbling creek, water flowing over and around the stones

#397 climbing huge rocks

#398 seeing kids running in open space

#399 smell of a scent by the creek. I wish I knew what was smelling so rich. the first breath when I smelled it immediately made me remember that smell at my grandmother’s yard…years ago.

#400  daintiness of a wild fern

#401 a letter daughter got from friend