Hard times: 7 benefits and blessings
Uncomfortable, difficult, troublesome, heartbreaking, stressful, painful, tearful, and heartbroken – these are just a few adjectives that describe difficult times. We have all experienced them, some of us more painfully than others, but everyone in this world has their story of pain to tell. So how do we manage? How do we find comfort, peace, and something positive in difficult times? First, we begin by understanding the reality of this dimension: that everything has two sides and that for every positive there is a negative; for every curse there is a blessing. With this in mind, let’s look at 7 benefits and blessings of hard times.
1. make us stronger
It is a fact of life that muscles get stronger under stress. That’s why athletes and people concerned about their health and longevity lift weights and exercise. Stress is part of the strengthening process. When one is tired it is difficult to give up the comfort of a recliner, sofa or bed, but if we do not resist those temptations, the result is that we become a mushy mass of mush with all its debilitating physical problems. Hard workouts make us stronger. Also difficult times. If we didn’t have hard times, we could never get strong. Therefore, as uncomfortable as difficult times are, positive action is to embrace them.
2. Generate patience
Patience is a great virtue. It prevents us from spoiling ourselves and having the right. It deepens our character and strengthens our substance as a person. Difficult times demand that we learn patience. If we don’t, we will have a nervous breakdown or develop other mental, physical, or emotional problems. We have to learn to wait. Patience is the virtue of waiting. All things come in due time. The seeds we plant must eventually bring a harvest. Patience is the process of nurturing the seeds until they bear fruit.
3. Forcing ourselves to rethink our lives and our values.
When times and conditions are tough and difficult, they force us to rethink life and our place in it. We often need this shake. As Socrates said, Unexamined life is not worth living. Rethinking often leads us to rethink how we handle our life and its circumstances. This examination often sets us on a new course toward greater fulfillment. When we don’t examine our life, our actions, behaviors, morals, ethics, and conduct, we become stale and boggy. We need difficult times to keep the waters of our being churned so that they can cleanse themselves of impurities. Stagnant waters create stagnant lives.
4. Potentially transform ourselves into diamonds
An ordinary piece of coal or a diamond, what would we rather be? If our choice is to become a diamond, we must submit to the heat, pressure, and time required to create the most exquisite of all gemstones. By doing so, we will get great value. The simple truth is that if we don’t put ourselves through the heat, pressure, and time it takes to turn into a diamond, we’ll still be a relatively worthless old piece of common coal. Diamonds are made under extreme heat and pressure for an extended period of time, not by a mother and a casual gust of intermittent wind. Therefore, difficult times are a welcome condition. Without them, we remain pressureless, untested, unchanged … and in common.
5. make us grateful and grateful
There is probably no greater spiritual virtue than being thankful and grateful, not just for those things, events, and conditions that we personally like, but for everything we get in life, whether we perceive such things as blessings or not. Sometimes the best gifts is it so the hard times, the headaches, the heartbreaks, the stress-filled days, months, years, or even decades. The conclusion of human life is that we are human. The human form should not be taken lightly. It has a greater purpose and design than is commonly known. It is a blessing beyond blessings, and no matter what our condition in life is, we should be grateful for it because, spiritually speaking, we may never have it again.
6. Let us see what is real and important.
Difficult times realign our focus and make us see what is important in life. Too often we drift into the superficial rags of materialism and worldly participation. We consume ourselves with things that don’t matter at all, even though we think they do matter. But what about the things that really matter? Life itself, love, integrity, health, family and … God.
7. Turn our conscience toward God
This is the greatest benefit and blessing of difficult times: they often force us to redirect our attention towards God and away from everything external, mundane, superficial, material and meaningless. Without hard times, do we ever look inward? Honestly no. We are too involved in enjoying the external. The problem with this approach is that we can become so magnetized by the external that we live our entire lives within the “Great Outside”, abandoning the blessings and triumph-generating life of the “Great Inside.”
Summary
Difficult times bring stress and difficulties. However, when we open our eyes to its benefits, we are very blessed. Only great stress can create great peace. Only great trials can create great souls. Therefore, let us face difficult times with a fearless spirit and an attitude of gratitude. Doing so will be of enormous value to us and to our souls as we move along the highways and back roads of our human journey.