I took comfort from these words today...

"Laughter and tears, love and loss, work and play - such words sum up the rhythm of life.  Most of us will pass through each of these seasons at one point or another, perhaps repeatedly, because they are God's ordering for the human race in every single age and time.  But as we pass through some of these purposes, we do not feel much like singing about it...  We fight against the weeping, the mourning, the casting away, and the losing while striving to keep our lives entrenched in the laughter, the dancing, the embracing, and the peace.

The fight is quite natural, of course.  We all prefer the mountaintops to the valleys.  But the God who has ordered life to flow in and out of such seasons is the same God who has provided for our contentment in every season.

Contentment in the valleys comes when we stop fighting so hard to climb out.  God is the one who leads us into the valleys, and he will lead us back out in his time...  Trusting God in our hard times is the way to contentment - not just trusting him to get us out, but trusting his goodness while we are still in them."

-Lydia Brownback