My post this week will be a bit shorter than most of my other posts have been for two main reasons. 1. I didn’t take a lot of notes in class because of the way the discussion went (I had a hard enough time taking the notes I did) 2. I am crazy tired right now and am having a hard time focusing.

Our discussion was focused around the question

“Why do bad things happen to good people/good families?”

We talked about a few different points

-          Because this world is not designed to be easy.

-          Because it is in the hard things that we do that we find and define ourselves.

-          When bad things happen you can ether let is define you or refine you, as a family you can use it to let you break apart more or come together more.

-          Bad things happen because that is the plan that God set up and we knew that when we came here.

-          Bad is a possibility to everyone, to assume that bad things are not or will not happen to everyone is a statistical improbability.

It was funny to me because one of my hobbies is to collect quotes that are about getting over hard things and so I kept having quotes roll around my mind for the entire class period which gave me a chuckle. We talked about hard times and the things that we as students have experienced and the things we have learned from those hard things.

We have a student who speaks Chinese and my teacher asked her to write “Crisis” which consists of two symbols that by themselves stand for “Danger” and “Opportunity”. We began talking about the opportunities that come from hard times and how people and families can do two things when it comes to hard times, they can ether let those hard times put wedges in the relationships or they can turn towards one another and lean on one another instead of away from one another. Apparently women have more of a tendency to go to her mom and talk about things with her mom and men have a tendency to draw inwards and just ‘deal’ with the problem alone.

Both of these reaction is allowing the wedge to be put in the relationship, but if instead of that she talks to him and he listens then he talks about his pain they can actually grow closer together, but to grow closes of all they can both turn to Christ and allow him to wrap them together and help honor their marriage vows and help them maintain them.

If you are willing to put yourself aside and focus on your spouse and they focus on you then there is not anything that can tear you apart but it cannot be one person putting everything in, it must be both of you putting everything you have on the table and reaping the benefits of the meal.