Blessings and Curses

jacket: old navy (similar)   shirt: tjmaxx (similar)  tee: target  

Do you ever read something insightful, hear good advice or encouragement and kind of wish you didn't hear it because you know it applies directly to you? 

Because sometimes it is really hard to believe and live out that advice. 

That is how I've been feeling after I read the book Cold Tangerines by Shauna Niequiest. 

I had read this book awhile ago and wanted to read it again, as I felt like it would be applicable during this stage in my life.  And I was right. 

In a chapter about blessings and curses, Shauna writes about a friend's hardships and how it seemed like God was being cruel that year, but how she knew that he was not. 

"What I know now is that his (God's) kindness burns through the deepest betrayals and invites life from death every chance we let him.  There are things the explode into our lives and we call them curses, and then one day, a year later or ten years later, we realize that they are actually something else.  They are the most precious kinds of blessings." 

I find myself many mornings having a mini pity party for myself as I have started a new round of fertility treatments. 

My mornings involve lots of different medicines and my breaks at school involve insurance phone calls and dr. appointments, my blog rolls and facebook feeds are filled with pregnancy updates and announcements and my thoughts are constantly filled with anxiousness and uncertainty for the future. 

There are many days I look at this current place I'm in and feel as though it isn't fair.  

And it is easier to be upset and annoyed at this place where God has me.  

But I have a choice daily. 

". . . but more often than not, there is something just past the heartbreak, just past the curse, just past the despair and that thing is beautiful.  You don't want it to be beautiful, at first. You want to stay in the pain and the blackness because it feels familiar, and because you're not done feeling victimized and smashed up.  But one day you'll wake up surprised and humbled, staring at something you thought for sure was a curse and has revealed itself to be a blessing - a beautiful, delicate, blessing." 

While I can see some blessings that have come from this trial, I have yet to see this season of our life as beautiful, but I am waiting.  I know some day I will get there and that gives me hope. 

While I fail all the time, I am working on this daily. 

 Daily choosing to accept this place where God has me, and daily searching for the blessings in all this.