The beauty of difficult times

My brother said something to me once that has always stuck with me. He said that God doesn’t particularly care what happens outside of us because that doesn’t really matter. What matters is what’s inside of us. As a result, we are brought what we need and not necessarily what we want.

This is a profound truth because life is constantly bringing us the circumstances that we need for our healing and our growth. We may not recognize it at the time, but this is what’s happening.

I have certainly had my share of difficult times and I have survived every one of them. Not only have I survived them, but every difficult time has been followed by something great. I had a healing, an awareness, or a change that made my life much better.

I have a wonderful life today and I can honestly say that my life wouldn’t be near as wonderful if I didn’t have the difficult times from my past. I needed those times to get me where I am today. Look at your life and notice that the same is probably true for you.

Difficult times are brought to us. They force us to look at areas of our life that we need to look at, but would never otherwise have a reason to. They put our issues in our face so we can heal them. They kick us out of our nest and they get us ready for our future. We wouldn’t grow if we didn’t have our challenges.

Difficult times are brought to us for our good, but in the fear and upset, we can’t imagine any good coming from them. This is because we can’t see the big picture. All we see is our current situation. Here is a classic example that demonstrates this.

Years ago, we had to put my mother in a home because her Alzheimer’s made it too dangerous for her to live by herself. I remember how upset she was. In fact I don’t remember her ever being so upset. Putting her in the home was hard on all of us.

Then, about three months later, she met this man down the hall. The two of them fell madly in love with each other. Every where they went, they held hands and called the other “My Sweetie.” Their romance became so well known that the local paper came out and did a feature story on them for Valentine’s Day.

Now here’s the question. If my mother knew what was in store for her, would she have fought going to the home? No she would have fought to get in the home. She just didn’t see the big picture. The same true for all of us.

This is where trust comes in. When you trust that you will be okay no matter what happens, life becomes a lot easier. You become more effective and the difficult times pass much faster.

We don’t have a choice whether we are going to have difficult times. We are. Our only choice is to flow with them and have them go quickly, or to fight them and have them move slowly.

So trust. Trust that you will always be okay no matter what happens. Trust that there is a divine purpose in your difficult time whether you see it or not. Trusting is one of the keys to creating a great life.