When Pictures Only Tell Half the Story

If I were to post these pictures from David's violin recital last evening...

...the recital in which he played beautifully Gavotte from "Mignon"...

...and I accompanied him (and some other students)...

...and his wonderful teacher Megan was there to listen and give encouragement...

...if I were to post these pictures and leave it at that, you might think, "Well, I guess things are still going swimmingly in the Fisher household.  Don't they ever have any problems?  It's just happy, happy, joy, joy all the time for their family!"

Of course you'd be wrong.

In this particular case, the story these pictures don't tell is that we've had a week of sickness - again - and in fact, Josiah was supposed to play in this particular recital, but was feeling so poorly that he did not.  These pictures don't show the germs that circled around and hit almost all of us (except Jeff), afflicting us with random fevers, achiness, sore throats, and coughs.  Most of all, the pictures don't give you an indication as to my mental state of being--the one that is sick and tired of being sick and tired.

I'm too exhausted and it feels like too much work to write much more about all of this, but I'll just mention two things.  First, about five years ago, we had a winter (but it's not winter any more, is it?) like this one in which we seemed to go from one set of germs to the next with days of perfect health being few and far between.  I'm glad every winter isn't like this, and I'm exceedingly grateful that none of these illnesses have been serious, but still...

Second, rather than describe all the details of the difficulties of this week, suffice it to say that at some point, all I could think, "Life is hard.  Life is just really hard."

And then I kick myself because I realize that what seems hard to me would be a piece of CAKE for most of the people on this big, beautiful earth.

But you know what?

It still feels hard to me.