One of my pet peeves (I have several) is when someone says to me: “God only gives you what you can handle.”  Okay, it’s more than a pet peeve.  I find it excruciating to hear – like when someone runs their fingernails down a blackboard.  Remember blackboards?  If you have grey hair like mine, then you might 😉

While I can understand why there are those of you who believe that we really only get what we can cope with, you might consider keeping it to yourself.  Just because it helps you to come to terms with unfortunate happenstance, it does not necessarily follow that it is of any assistance to the rest of us.

The truth is: shit happens!  And that shit is random.  Plain and simple, folks.

So what can we do with that?  Well, we are certainly not ecstatically flying around the room and thrilled that life has dealt a bad deck.  “Woohoo!  I am so excited that…….(insert really awful event here)!”  Hmmmm, no.  You are not thrilled about that.  I’m certainly not, anyway.

When bad things happen, we have no choice but to deal with it.  I lost a chef friend of mine to brain cancer – he and his wife did not succumb to such a tragedy because they could handle it.  My girl friend died of a heart attack, due to complications from scleroderma, at age 40, leaving her husband and their three young children – they handled it because they had to.  Another friend of mine has had a hell of a year and a half beating breast cancer – again, she had no choice but to deal with what life had thrown at her.

So did ‘God’ give those people these awful illnesses because they could cope more than the person living in bliss?  I don’t think so.  Are the earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions that take numerous lives sent by ‘God’ because those particular populations were able to manage better than others?  Really folks?  Do you honestly believe that?  I’m actually asking you the question, by the way, because I would love to know what exactly it is that you think someone could handle.