www.bible.com/reading-plans/26293/day/3

Oh, my! The story of Joseph has a happy ending but not before he goes through some really rough times. I can identify with Joseph because of events in my family when I first got married. I won’t bore you with the whole story but suffice it to say that my dad was in trouble and dragged my mom and younger siblings along with him to escape justice (at least for a while). I felt alone and adrift, pregnant with my first baby and not knowing where my family was for over two years. I was a new Christian, too, and I think the Lord is who saved my sanity during these hard times. My siblings were 19, 11 and 5 and I didn’t even know that they were okay. My mom wrote me a letter after two years were over and we visited them in FL, introduced them to their new granddaughter and tried to pretend that all was okay. But my trust for my father was gone…poof! I kept waiting for a second shoe to drop and more revelations about his past. It took many years but I finally came to forgive him and helped most of my siblings to forgive him, too. My dad fell off his pedestal and the harsh reality of drug addiction and all of the evil that comes along with it changed my life for many years after that.

I think that we all have skeletons in our closet that we don’t really like to talk about or remember. But reading the story of Joseph and how God used his hard times to make him stronger and use him for a greater purpose reminded me of all I had gone through and how God carried me most of the way.