Hard times and the new year

So many things on my mind, I feel like I need to write but deciding on which strand of the web of thoughts in my mind is not easy. I suppose that the thing weighing on me the most is the new year. So many of my friends celebrated a year filled with "good" things, and hoped for another year with similar blessings. While other friends lamented of all of the "bad" that they experienced and hoped to never deal with again. Then there are those blasted memes that tell me that each day this year is a blank page in a book so I need to make sure I write a good one. As if I don't already have enough pressure on me to be a good excellent wife, mother, homemaker, homeschool teacher, student, business woman, et cetera, et cetera. Now I need to make sure enough "good" and exciting things happen to me and my family this year so that at the end of this year I can look back and see the good book I have written from the successful year I've just had.

Except that, if you stop and think about it, that would be a pretty dumb book and no one would read it. Seriously, who wants to read about a life where only good things happen? Maybe if you're reading a board book that would be ok. No, we want to read stories where people overcome and get through their hard times (notice I didn't say "bad", I'll get to that later). They solve difficult mysteries, endure pain, and live through the impossible, but never go from pleasant thing to pleasant thing. So, really, if you want this year to turn out to be a good book then you are going to have to do hard things and go through trials.

Bad vs hard. I have stopped thinking about my trials as bad and started thinking of them for what they really are, hard. Sometimes darn hard. There isn't really anything actually bad about what I'm going through. It sure isn't easy, and I despise when people try to diminish it or brush it off as insignificant. Things get hard and complicated, but how can I call the things that God has brought about in my life bad when the Bible is clear that it is for my good and His glory?