I apologize if I have been rude to you.  I lashed out at a friend the other day.  I just lost my temper.  I have not felt very well put together of late. I seem to have little margin to shrug things off. I am suffering from grief. What are you suffering from? Are you worried about the health of someone you care for, the loss of work, or the drop in income? Do you, too, feel that you have a short fuse about life in general?

In my own experience, it helps to have people you can turn to who will keep you in their prayers and also lend an ear to your fears or concerns. I have some of those in my life, and I hope that you do too. That can make a lot of difference in difficult and trying times.

But I have also lost some friends since my husband died. It saddens me, but I don’t know the reason. They just pushed the mute button or disappeared. Since none of us are omniscient, we have no way of knowing the totality of issues someone else is facing. So, all I know to do is to pray for them and reach out if that seems possible. We may need to pray for our friends while refraining from adding any pressure on them to explain their disappearance from our lives.

Life. Death. Plague. Friendship. It gets complicated. Don’t beat up yourself or others.

Trust in the Lord. Leave it to God.