I think sometimes about the things that have happened in my life. I think about how scared I was when I had to go to school for the first time. I was so afraid of what “might happen.” Honestly, I don’t know how my mother made it through my first grade year! It seems like I cried every single day! I was even afraid when we had our pictures made at school.

I think about my friends growing up and how irritated we might get with each other one day, and be fine the next. As I got older, there was other disappointments in life. In finding out people weren’t what you thought they were, or relationships were not as permanent as my young 16 year-old mind thought they would be.

As an adult, there have been the heartaches and the worries that being a parent of teenagers sometimes brings. I think about the sorrow of losing a baby. The sorrow of losing my husband. The unbearable sorrow of watching my children lose their daddy. I think about relationships that were lost, and the pain and the changes in my life caused by this. I think about watching my parents leave this earth for their heavenly home.

I don’t say all this to get you to feel sorry for me, or to feel anything about me at all. I know that most everyone has their own versions of these same type stories in their own lives. But, I say all this to say I did not keep crying every single day, like I did in first grade. Those relationships in high school that I thought might just be the one, are now good friends. I lived through all that.

The heartbreaks of death and loss have not defined me. None of this is because I am a superhuman! In fact, I remember someone once saying to me, after Mike had died, how brave and strong I was. I remember replying, “God is showing you someone else, because that is not at all how I really feel.” But what they were seeing through my life at that moment was my God. My God was strengthening me. My God was carrying me. My God was who they saw when they looked at me and saw brave.

And it is true today. Our God is the strength we need when we have nothing but weakness. Our God has the hands that holds our hearts together when they feel as though they will break apart. Our God is the One who wakes us up each day with the promise of better things ahead. As the verse goes, “My God shall supply ALL my needs according to His riches in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:19) And He does do this. Day after day. Problem afer problem. Our God is the glue, the strength, the hands, the above all that we need each day.

He is THE difference maker. Let Him make a difference for you.