Over the past few many months I have written, rewritten, erased, started, stopped, and ultimately given up on quite a few blog posts.

It seems 2020 has cornered yet another victim in “speechlessness.”

I’m still not really able to put into words everything that I’m thinking and feeling and sorting through.

But today, being the anniversary of a diagnosis that completely upended our last year, I just wanted to acknowledge that.

That I don’t have the right words – any words, really.

Although I am going to babble on anyway…

See, it seems on top of the whole global pandemic that the hits just keep on coming.

As we approach the two year anniversary of losing my mom the hole there seems just as large as it ever was.

In July we said goodbye to my grandfather, which has left another large hole in the fabric of our family.

And as I process the last year with the Smurflet, regarding his Epilepsy diagnosis last Halloween, and all that has come because of that,

Man.

I just don’t know how to say it all.

I guess I could say that it’s been hard but nowhere to go but up!

Or I suppose I could go the pity-party route and ask why me? Why us? When does it stop!

Or maybe I should do some combo of the two.

But I think what I really want to say is that it’s hard.

Maybe it’s just me, but I have found that it’s hard to walk down roads that one, you desperately don’t want to walk, and two, are both mentally and physically painful to endure.

I find it’s hard to have your world upended over and over and over again, until you feel like you’ll never catch your breath.

It’s hard when the world around you is telling you that you are doing it all wrong, when you’re just trying to keep some piece of it all even a little bit afloat.

It’s hard to balance the weight of it all.

And embarrassingly, it’s often hard (again, speaking for myself) to run back to the Gospel.

It’s hard to say that this is all good.

Not that what’s happening is good, it certainly is not, but that God is good.

So it is ultimately good.

Or will be good, one day, when we reach the glory of Heaven.

If I had to pick a word for the end of 2019 through this point in 2020 it would be: hard.

It’s a simple word, I know, and probably doesn’t pack much of a punch, but it just seems to sum everything up.

It is hard.

And I don’t have any words of wisdom for moving forward or clever quips about how it’s all going to be ok.

But what I do have are those surrounding us (from an appropriate social distance of six feet away) with the love of Jesus.

I have the continual reroute from brothers and sisters in Christ to get myself refocused on the end goal, rather than remaining focused on the here and now.

And I have my Savior.

Not that it makes it any less hard right now.

It doesn’t.

But a cure for the pandemic, healing of seizures, those things may never happen.

We certainly don’t live in a world where my mother or grandfather are going to suddenly come back.

But I have this.

Psalm 13:6: I will sing the Lord’s praise, for He has been GOOD to me.

I was given this verse a while ago by a dear friend and mentor.

Her admonishment to me, as I curled up under the weight of every crushing thing, was simply “Christ.”

Just Christ.

I was reminded that no matter what, even were I to lose every single thing I call good, I would still have Christ.

In today’s world it would seem that doesn’t come as much of an encouraging word.

We want the hard to go away.

We want to say that it’ll all work out in the end!

But sometimes,

Sometimes it doesn’t.

Sometimes they lose the battle with cancer.

Sometimes the diagnosis goes from pediatric epilepsy that they will grow out of to suddenly exploring the possibility of future brain surgery because nothing else seems to be working.

Sometimes there is a global pandemic with no end yet in sight.

Sometimes the hard just gets, well,

Harder.

So I remain thankful for the faithfulness of those around me as they remind me that ease and peace and smooth sailing is not the way of this world.

But rather, the hard, the exhausting, the painful, and yes, even the global pandemics, are to point us to Christ.

And were I to lose all I call good,

I would still have Him.