Visualize your hands placing in God's hands the person or problem you are concerned about.9 Visualize His hands gently and lovingly holding that person or willingly accepting that problem. Now, visualize His hands holding you. All is well for the moment. All is as it should be and as it needs to be. All will be well—better than you think.

Have no fear, child, a voice whispers. Have no regrets. Relinquish your resentments. Let Me take your pain. All you have is the present moment. Be still. Be here. Trust. All you have is now. It is enough.

In spite of the range of needs and wants that go unmet when we don't love, it may feel safer to not love. We don't risk the uncertainty and vulnerability of closeness. We don't risk the pain of loving, and for many of us love has caused a great deal of pain.

I can hang on to God and trust that He knows.

It's how we survive the hurts in life that brings us strength and gives us our beauty.

You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives" (Genesis 50:20).

Lord, You know me. You know my natural personality is given to fear. You know all my insecurities. You know that I have a need to be loved and to feel significant and to feel affirmed. And Father, I'm not going to ask my family to do that for me today. They may or may not, and if they do, that's wonderful. But Father, You are my sole satisfaction, and I ask You to satisfy me this morning with Your unfailing love.

God will sometimes allow things to get bad enough that we will be forced to look up. Victory always begins with a cry for help. When we come to the end of ourselves and cry out for help, amazing things happen.

Nothing on earth compares to the strength God is willing to interject into lives caught in the act of believing.

We'll probably never learn to enjoy our storms, but we can learn to enjoy God's presence in the midst of them.

Whenever you feel alone, rejected, or misunderstood, stand your situation up next to David's. The boy had as pure a heart as humanly possible, and his own family blasted him. Ouch. I don't want to minimize your hurts, but in David you can certainly find someone who has been there, done that.

Jesus loves us. He is not scandalized by our failures. He is not limited in what he can do with what's left after family disasters. Nothing is beyond his redemption when he is invited in. No one with a whit of breath left is beyond the reach of his grace.