There are a few blogs that I read religiously. One being www.modesty.blogspot.com . This is written by one of my favorite authors (he’s also a musician). His latest post is on the connection between trials and who we are today. What happens to us shapes how we react to the world around us, and trials and hardships are no different. Without them perhaps we would not be as able to sympathize, empathize or even just ‘give a damn’. I can see how true this is in my own life.

My sisters and I regularly discuss the time my family took in foster children. This was such a heartbreaking, emotionally turbulent time for all of us. A conclusion that we have drawn is that you can’t understand how that season of life felt to us, unless you’ve been through it yourself. That is one of the reasons I believe God allows us to go through trials. Because of tough times, we are able to relate to, and consequently encourage, those who go through similarly trying times.

I’m a huge fan of the book Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie. I feel that this book perfectly captures what it means to be a child, and how one’s imagination works, even as an adult. In one of my favorite scenes, Peter is fighting with Captain Hook and Hook starts ‘fighting dirty’, that is breaking the rules of a fair fight. In this poignant scene, Peter is shocked by this. The idea that anyone can break a rule, that to him seemed fundamental, was unthinkable to him. I believe that this is the loss of innocence. There is no turning back from this point. Knowing that sin exists, that there are bad things out there, illuminates the world like never before, though not in an appealing manner (similar to the Garden of Eden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil). The beauty of the child known as Peter Pan is that he instantly forgets this. The ‘first time’ he encounters unfairness is repeated, again and again, because his mind is incapable of remembering it. This, I believe is an essential lesson to be learned, one I’m still trying to grasp. Even when life throws us a curve, even when it feels like everything is going wrong, we need to almost ‘forget’ that bad things happen and move on. Dwelling on that which haunts us, only makes matters worse…

I’m not saying to see the world through rose colored glasses, to pretend that all is always well when it’s not, but I do believe that there is a time when we can move forward with our life, and see the good that exists. To hold our heads high and say, “yeah, life can get me down, yeah, it’s going to happen again and again, but I’m going to act as if it won’t, i’m going to keep living and hope for the best, knowing that the worst can happen, and choosing to ignore that”.

Or as Chris (www.askheychris.livejournal.com) puts it: “I have three things for the machine: two swear fingers and a smile”