tempering

In order to strengthen steel it is placed into a red hot fire to burn off impurities and change the makeup of the atoms. Rearranging them into something stronger, harder and tougher.
I feel like this past year (& even now) I am going through a similar process.  Life is not being overall kind and certainly not easy these days or recent days or the last 365-380...
Between the tragedies of death - both sudden and expected but none easier - and the massive shift of location and makeup of our family- we would have been covered.  But in addition to that throw in a promotion and adjustment to a whole new department in my job in a new city in a very different part of the country.  New friends and responsibilities.  Two children in very challenging stages in their lives. A slightly to semi - broken hub and mother in law both struggling with enormous and unresolved relationship history as we all try to live together.  All of this is challenge enough for a year.
Now throw in construction.  Disruption. Inconvenience.  Now you are testing with fire.
And for good measure let's now have a crazy neighbor.  Like he calls the cops on a children's pool party and clear cut all the branches of your tree that hang over his property line crazy. And that was a few years ago. Now he messes with fences and diverts water onto others property.  He berates neighbors and anyone who works on his property.  He is belligerent and unstable. After not quite 9 months I am now looking at restraining orders and options due to a harassing and threatening phone call at my job. And we are not alone. Now he has apparently taken to photographing the neighborhood children instead of just staring at them. And my kiddos are next door.
So there is my fire. My furnace. My hardening trials that will turn me strong. I only hope that I am not sharp and brittle at the end of this. I hope the fire burns away the impurities and makes me more myself  I hope beyond hope that my little family (now a little bigger) gets through all this in one piece and stronger and better on the other side. That we are whole and happy. That my children are safe and my husband and I are happy again- not happy moments happy, but 'wish I knew their secret' happy.