Today's "Stuff"

 Happy Saturday to all.  We're getting around a little bit better here, a Good Thing after the last few weeks of misery and illnesses.

I had to make a "run" for Dear Wife this afternoon, down to our local grocery.  Needed -- and Right Away Too -- a couple things I'd not gotten the other day (hadn't been on the list I was given) so off I went.  OK.  Couldn't help notice that the very air looked grey and sad.  I tend to pick up on that, it matches my general doleful outlook.

We -- meaning I -- have a bad habit of letting our surroundings and our circumstances to govern our outlook on life.  I'm more prone to that than most.  One of my earliest memories is the death of my father's sister; I couldn't have been more than 4 or so.  Another of those outlook-shaping memories is being, age around 4-1/2 of so, at home with Dad at work, when my mother suffered a miscarriage.  I was the one who had to grab a phone and start calling people to come get her and take her to hospital.  Grim.  Several more similar situations as I say my parents' world collapse and their dreams die.  An attitude reinforced as I, and later Wife and I, went through a whole series of life-shattering situations.

And, yet, our circumstances should not be the only criteria.  We, particularly those who claim Christ, are supposed to, called to, and blessed to call that eternal relationship with the Lord as being our real sense of joy and of happiness.  (and they are not the same thing).  That gray sky won't be there forever.  The bumps in the road are not hidden from the Lord.  Sometimes they serve His purpose.

Seeing the Lord's hand in the clouds is something I'm supposed to be pursuing.  Perhaps tomorrow I'll do it better.