Day 15 Project GRAPEful

Project GRAPEful

Sharing Grape Stuff’s Day 15 Project GRAPEful

We aim to bless our readers who, for the most part, have had a very difficult year in 2015. For the next 21 days until Thanksgiving day, we will be sharing inspiring stories and things we are “GRAPEful” for. We pray these tidbits bless you and that you and your family will find peace and strength each day. (Aside from being able to enter to win prizes which you can read more about by clicking the link above.)

Here is the final part of my article on The Blessings of Pain:

8. Pain makes you stronger.

Though it doesn’t feel like it at the time, in retrospect, you do feel a sense of strength having gone through something so difficult. Whether it’s physical or emotional pain and as difficult as it is to admit, we do feel as if we’ve overcome after we are over the worst of a particular struggle de jur. After the pain of childbirth, I don’t much worry about the pain I feel when I bang my knee. As compared with the pain of worrying about my dd’s heart condition when she was young and seeing her jaw bone through her chin when she hit the ice while skating, I wasn’t as easily frazzled when she tore a ligament in Karate. After having been through the pain of seeing her empty room when she left for college or when she spent a semester half way around the world in Russia, the sadness when she left to go to grad school in Texas didn’t seem as devastating to me.

My sister’s kids where always having high fevers and were forever getting sick. I remember talking to her about my fear when my dd’s fevers would spike and she was able to reassure me based upon her experience.

People ask me about the stress of having to replace all of my electronic devices after a lightening strike took out 18 of them back in June. I remember thinking, yeah. It’s a bit annoying having to buy and install or schedule repairs on all these items. This was a mild annoyance, but we had the money to replace them all. Having to figure out where to find the money to replace a $15 item was much more stressful!

Those of us suffering from chronic illness are pain warriors! We’ve been through it all and back again and, though we’d never knowingly ask for it, we are stronger for having had to deal with it in our lives. It’s been much easier to handle little setbacks the last several years than it was in the beginning of my journey with chronic illness. I used to immediately jump on the “freaked out” wagon. Now it takes a lot more for me to get freaked out. To paraphrase a popular meme on Facebook, my track record for getting through difficult times is unblemished. I’ve done it each and every time and God has been there every step of the way with me. It’s not too much of a leap to assume He’ll be there again and I’ll come through.

So today, I’m thankful for the strength I have gained from the struggles I have already lived through!

What are your struggles and what are you thankful for today? Please share as a comment down below this post. And please share this post with your Facebook family and other social media friends to inspire them to come and share their own as well. We’ll be praying for each person listed below.

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Here’s what will be awarded for the contest so far:

1. The most inspirational story

2. The person who shared our blog posts the most

3. The most insightful thing gained from doing this project

Prizes will include: