**If you haven't seen it already, please scroll down to the previous post to read the specific prayer requests for Angel**

Some days it just feels like Heaven can't come soon enough. Some days just feel so heavy...so riddled with sadness. Today is one of those days for sure. In fact, to be perfectly honest, the last six months have echoed much of what I feel today. There is just so much sadness and sickness all around. All too often I am hearing news of family or friends going through such trying times. Friends with cancer...friends with children who are dangerously ill...loved ones and family of loved ones suffering with illness, cancer, death. Today, I feel overwhelmed by it all. Today, the tears are close at hand.

In addition to knowing all the suffering that Angel is enduring and the grief that ensues from that, today we also learned that a co-worker of Ty's (who is also a friend of ours) lost her husband last night to the cancer he had been fighting for many months. 7 days before Christmas. I shake my head at the thought as the tears well in my eyes. I am so sad for all these awful things lingering around me, yet I thank God even as the sadness sits heavy in my heart for all the blessings I enjoy. I AM blessed. I am so fortunate!

On my run this morning, shortly after posting about the prayers that are currently needed for Angel, I just felt this overwhelming burden weighing on my heart. So much so that it seemed difficult to continue putting one foot in front of the other. I wanted to just stop and sit...and stare. But I didn't. Instead, continuing on, I breathlessly prayed for Angel and each precious friend I know who is suffering. I cried as I ran (which is actually quite a strange thing) but in the moments after I prayed, I looked up to find the most beautiful message of comfort written in the morning sky. The sun had yet to fully rise, but there were trails of clouds in the sky, left there by what I am assuming was passing airplanes and they were brilliantly illuminated by the morning light. The blessing of it all was the picture they painted. One HUGE, brilliantly lit cross sat off to the left in the open sky, then a cluster of trails in the shape of three other crosses...almost exactly the depiction of the three crosses on Calvary. The sky was a vibrant blue with no other clouds in sight except these. And as I gazed up at them, in my heart I heard God whisper comfort...almost as if He was saying "Take comfort...the victory has already been won. ONE DAY there will be no more sadness and no more tears. One day, even death will be swallowed up. " Oh to know that ONE DAY all this suffering around us all will end! There IS hope beyond what we can see! How thankful I am for a hope such as this!

I knew that God intended those clouds for me this morning. A precious gift from my heavenly Father! For it didn't take long for the winds up there in the atmosphere to whisk them away, and within mere minutes after I first gazed at them, the beautiful crosses were gone.

Thank you, Lord for the hope you bring, even when suffering abounds! Thank you for this Christmas...for sending your only son to be born so that we may know this hope!