Meaning in Trials

Core Value, Healing, Trials 0

These ten things — and I don’t care what you call them: ways, steps, practices, teachings — are things to do, to stop doing, to think of, to remember, and to become so that you can find your way through this very hard time. Their purpose is to show you that rather than being random assaults from an uncaring universe, the difficulties you are going through have meaning and purpose. Not only is your crisis here to get you to exercise your coping muscles, and therein to discover your strength; your problems also have a larger purpose. And that is to remind you of the quality of being that you truly are — powerful, loving, eternal.

— Daphne Rose Kingma, Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart, p. xvi-xvii

The Process of Growth

Growth, Trials 0

When it comes to religion today, we tend to be long on butterflies and short on cocoons. Somehow we’re going to have to relearn that the deep things of God don’t come suddenly. It’s as if we imagine that all of our spiritual growth potential is dehydrated contents to which we need only add some holy water to make it instantly and easily appear.

I received a letter recently from someone who was feeling impatient about taking the long way round. She wrote, “Pole vaulting is so much more alluring than crawling.”

— Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits, p. 26

The Promise of Change

Growth, Healing, Life, Trials 0

The presence of pain is the promise of change. That’s because it hurts to suffer, and when we’re suffering we’re far more inclined to take risks, to take action, to fall on our knees, to break out of bad habits, to break out of the box in order to get beyond the pain that we’re in. Suffering, therefore, is always an invitation to change, to get into alignment with what is most true and beautiful in life, with our deepest and most expansive feelings, with Love itself.

It may not feel this way right now, but just as the oak tree, folded and invisible, lies whole within the acorn, so everything you need to live through this current anguish is within you. You are blessed. Your life is designed. If this crisis weren’t meant to be part of your life, it would not be happening. This is the moment and these are precisely the experiences through which your emotional body is being healed, your soul is being refined and enlarged, and your life itself is taking on a new meaning.

— Daphne Rose Kingma, The Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart, p. xviii-xix

God’s Best

God, Growth, Love, Trials 0

If we believe that God does his best for every man and woman, we must also believe that God knows every person’s needs, and will, for love’s sake, not spare one pang that may serve to purify the soul of one of his children.

— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 21

House on the Sand

Life, Trials, Trust 0

A time of crisis presents a good opportunity to identify the foundation on which I construct my life. If I place my ultimate trust in financial security, or in the government’s ability to solve my problems, I will surely watch the house crumble. (And the foolish man’s house went “splat!”)

— Philip Yancey, Grace Notes, p. 94

Value Joy.

Joy, Trials 0

The only value suffering has is that it points out that you’re running low on happiness. The function of suffering is, therefore, to remind you to choose happiness, choose love, choose healing, choose forgiveness, choose laughter, choose freedom. Thus, the most helpful response to suffering is to use suffering as a chance to hit the “re-set” button in your life, and commit once again to what is truly important.

To be happy, you must value joy more than pain. You want to remind yourself again and again that suffering cannot buy me happiness.

— Robert Holden, PhD, Happiness Now! p. 113-114

Opportunities

God, Letting Go, Life, Trials, Trust 0

The fact is, we always have the choice to turn from a problem focus to a resolution focus. We get to choose how big we want to make a problem. We don’t have to do things the way we’ve always done them. This is a huge revelation for many of us. We can disengage from any situation. We can say nothing or simply walk away. A great beginning is simply to see problems as opportunities to let God into our lives. Take it from me. The sense of personal empowerment that accompanies letting God handle the problem while we attend to watching for the solution is life changing.

— Karen Casey, Change Your Mind and Your Life Will Follow, p. 134

Finding Treasure

Compassion, Forgiveness, Healing, Joy, Life, Trials 0

Adopting the perspective of the Stargazer not only leads us toward our future best destinies but actually transmutes past unhappiness into treasure.  This is because, in emotional terms, everything is made from its opposite.  The raw material for joy is sorrow; the raw material for compassion is anger; the raw material for fearlessness is fear.  This means that the very people who hurt you worst may turn out to have enriched you most.  “Forgiveness” isn’t even an issue from the position of the Stargazer.  Why would anyone bother to “forgive” someone who’d made them rich?

— Martha Beck, Steering by Starlight, p. 76