I am exceedingly blessed. I have good solid relationships with all my family members. There's no "Great Aunt Eloise who no one has talked to in years because she said that... and would you believe she did that....and so on." I'm grateful for that.
I hate having regrets.
I hate living with regrets.
So I'm trying to live as fully as possible without them. I feel blessed because of all the many hard lessons the Father has taught me over these almost 29 years; blessed because though the lessons were often just plain awful (like leaving your family for a foreign land with your new husband that you've only been married to for three months- woof), it's FORCED me to lean more fully on Him, to cleave closer to Him, to breathe Him in more deeply.
I've learned that He alone is good, that life isn't good because we have hot showers, jeans, or cheese, or even an oven (deep- I know:). He is good.
There's been many hard hard lessons during our time thus far in East Africa. Nights that I fall asleep on a tear ladden pillow, because I just can't stop thinking about the awful stories I had heard that day of suffering here and around the world. I wonder why Jesus just can't come back now and end all this terribleness. And He reminds me, that still, for many, the suffering is just beginning. He wants all to know Him. And for this reason He is patient, as this world aches and groans under the weight of its own brokeness, He extends His heart to heal.
I'm so blessed by the healing He's done in my own heart. I look back on the person I was three years ago. And I (and probably everyone else around me:) am so glad I'm not the same. He's using these growing pains to chisel away the hardness of my heart, to reveal a heart that is soft, soft for what He is soft for, a heart that is free of bitterness, haughtiness, and anger.
And there's still a lot more chiseling to be done. I'm not there yet and still have a long ways to go. I'll get there, someday:)