This is a guest post by Bar Refaeli. Bar’s Facebook Page.

Most of the time I still feel like a kid. But over the past year or so I’ve really started to encounter some things that constitute the real beginnings of growing up. I think one of the biggest things that comes into your life as an adult, is learning how to deal with death. It is a very strong, very dark, very difficult thing to process. As a kid, and a teen death isn’t something you have to deal with directly. You know about it, but in a very vague sense. I remember when I was 19, my Graddy passed away. It was the first family member that I was close to that died, but even at that age I didn’t fully go through the motions of dealing with death. But just in this past year, it seems like death has found its way into a permanent place of my reality.

I’ve never really been a fearful person. The biggest thing I’m probably afraid of is the dentist, doctor….you get the idea. But living in LA has definitely awakened my awareness of how dangerous the world actually is. Now I’m a big stickler for not living in fear. I think that if you are constantly afraid and let that control the things you do and do not do, you will miss out on the most fulfilling things in life. But hearing about a young woman who was raped and killed less than two miles from your apartment, changes your perspective a little bit. And seeing on the news that a child was abducted in a gated community in a nice area, and reading in a magazine about a girl who was abducted and raped twice by two different men… those things are scary. And they are real.

I also have a close friend, Ben Rom was a victim of cancer and he passed away 2 years. The word cancer is probably thrown around more than any other illness or disease there is, but its different when it happens to someone you know. It’s different when its someone in your life who loses someone so important in theirs. But you know, of all the terrible things I’ve just written, I think the hardest things I have ever had to live through is saying goodbye to my horse, Storm, who I’ve had since I was 10 years old. Death has never been a more real and present aspect of my life until now. For those of you who aren’t animal lovers or didn’t grow up with pets, this may seem silly compared to a lot of other things. But honestly, that horse has been the only constant thing in my life that has never let me down, never hurt my feelings, never disappointed me, and never left me. I had a friendship with Storm that surpassed any other friendship I’ve had. The reality that he is no longer breathing, or walking… its a very difficult thing to live with.
But I guess growing up does that. It changes your perspective, it changes the order in which things matter, it changes what you value. But thankfully, the one thing that will never change, is that God is always here. In every moment, good times and hard times. Life and death…. God is in it all. And the peace that He brings me will get me through this life. I am so thankful for every blessing I have been given, whether they come in seasons or for a lifetime.