When life tests you to your limits.

Today my father took flowers down to the church, in memory of his wife of 52 years, my mother. Prayers were offered in memory of her today there. The same place where we all gathered, family and friends, at her memorial service a year ago. In a little over a week, it will be one year that she has been gone.

And what a year this has been.

I would love to say that we have all prospered in spite of such overwhelming loss, or that we found comfort somehow.

But life has been cruel and harsh and unyielding.

For me, it has been the hardest one yet.

In a few weeks, without a miracle of a new job, I will lose my home and my freedom and independence yet again. I was terminated from the job from hell a little over a week ago.

There's nothing left.

Still, the work on the book goes forward. I may have to pack up the cameras, the furniture and the computers and move it somewhere soon, but it's not going to derail me.

I've been tested so many times I now consider Job to be a kindred spirit.

In the end, he caved after tumultuous losses in his life, and forsake God and condemned him and lost faith. The Devil "won" the bet with God. But God forgave Job.

The one thing I don't share with that biblical character's story is that I don't expect any redemption to come my way. It is what it is, and no divine intervention or miracles are coming.

The most profound of my life's lessons comes in the form of a line in a powerful movie, "Unforgiven".

When Gene Hackman's character is wounded and on the floor of the Saloon, and Clint Eastwood's character is standing over him with a shotgun pointed at his head...Hackman says "I was building a house...I don't deserve this. I don't deserve to die like this".

Eastwood responds:

"Deserve's got nothin' to do with it".

And then pulls the trigger.

If life were fair and I got what I believe I would deserve, than I wouldn't be facing such overwhelming loss now, and for the last 5 years. My dad wouldn't be struggling to hold onto what he has left.

We wouldn't be anguishing about what comes next.

No, we are tested. Sometimes to the very limit we can endure.

When hope for calm and peace and security and some measure of happiness becomes so elusive and distant it become a cruel joke. That it even exists for us comes into question.

Neither my father or I deserve to be here now.

Yet we are.

Because deserve has nothing to do with it.