What-ifs and Forgiveness

I am getting close to the end of reading The Shack. It has changed my perspective of God. I think it's something anyone who believes in God should read. In that, I've made some changes, and frankly, I'm getting tired of people (myself included) feeling sorry for themselves all the time and ranting and raving about it. When you put things into perspective, I bet we all have pretty good lives compared to others around us.
This weekend I learned our friend has cancer. His wife is a very good friend of mine. They went to the hospital for blood clots and found testicular cancer that has spread to the kidneys, lymph nodes and abdomin. While there, my friend found out her mom broke her neck. Last week my friend broke her foot. They have been struggling with fertility for years. This is an extremely trying time for them, but you know what? She said her husbands spirits were pretty high. He got some devastating news and he was still joyful.
I'm learning to be more thankful for what I do have instead of getting angry at the bad. My husband and kids are healthy. My husband spends many hours on the roads in the evenings, rain, shine, tornadoes, snow storms, and has had many close calls because of other stupid drivers. But I can't dwell on what could have happened or what might happen in the future. I pray for him and his safety every single day. I pray for the dumb drivers around him. I could sit home scared everynight that a police officer is going to come to my door and tell me something bad happened. But I will not allow myself to do that.
I am thankful that I have my healthy children. They are healthy and safe. I heard of a close call recently that another friend of mine almost lost one of her children. Someone wanted to take her child right in front of her. But she acted quickly and did not. There are so many everyday that lose their children to death or to predators. I know a family in our church who has lost two children-one due to an illness, another soon after birth.
I think about the community we are reaching out to as a church and how most of the kids in the school district we are working with don't even have the money for pencils for school. I am thankful that although we don't have much money, we do have the money for things like that, or day trips to Chicago sometimes, or weekend trips to Michigan a few times a year. Even the fact that we don't have to eat Ramen noodles everyday is a blessing!
There are so many other stories of people that have had horrible horrible things happen, yet they do not dwell on it. Yet most of us dwell on the what-if's. I'm done dwelling on the what-ifs. I will do what I can to protect my family, but we live in a fallen, evil world. God does not make bad things happen. He allows some of them to happen, but for the things he allows, he uses it for good. And I'm confident that God stops a lot more things from happening than we give him credit for. I don't want bad things to happen to my family, and I hope they don't. But some things I cannot prevent. I pray for them, and will continue to pray for them everyday.

This can all bring into question forgiveness. Yes, time is too short to not forgive. Forgiveness frees our heart. It lets go. However, I do not for one minute believe that forgiveness means you have to jump back into a relationship with those who have hurt you. Sometimes it works and it's great, other times, when the same things happen over and over and over, it's just plain stupidity. There have been many things that have happened to us, specifically by one person, and I know that person has told a LOT of people, and not told the entire story, because many have come back to me and questioned it. That is why we generally keep our mouths shut. If it's in a safe setting, we may talk because we're hoping our experience can help someone else. But to reiterate, it's not that I haven't forgiven, it's that I am not stupid enough to allow that misery back into my life at this time. I have prayed extensively about this and feel that God has said to let it go into his hands, leave it there, and do nothing but pray right now. So that is what I am doing.