Safetysuit: These Times Are Hard

My daughter wrote a blog about a song from Safetysuit called These times are Hard.  I highly recommend you read it and enjoy the song early in the post and don't miss the video later in the post.  Click here to go to her blog.

These times may be hard but hard times help us find our abilities and how to use them better than the easy times!  As the old saying goes, "As the going gets tough, the tough get going". 

The difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is how you use them. – Unknown

If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. – Mary Engelbreit

He knows not his own strength who hath not met adversity. – William Samuel Johnson

Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them. – Publilius Syrus  -- Just in case you have never heard of this guy you might be interested to know he was a slave in Italy in the 1st century BC (so he knows about hard times!).  Because of his wit and talent he impressed his owner who as a result not only freed him but also educated him giving him opportunities in life that have led to us hearing about him thousands of years later.  

Maybe you will enjoy some excerpts from a talk by Joseph B. Wirthlin

The way we react to adversity can be a major factor in how happy and successful we can be in life.

“Joseph,” she said (his mother), “come what may, and love it.”

I think she may have meant that every life has peaks and shadows and times when it seems that the birds don’t sing and bells don’t ring. Yet in spite of discouragement and adversity, those who are happiest seem to have a way of learning from difficult times, becoming stronger, wiser, and happier as a result.

Yet like everyone else, I have had times in my life when it seemed that the heaviness of my heart might be greater than I could bear. During those times I think back to those tender days of my youth when great sorrows came at the losing end of a football game.

How little I knew then of what awaited me in later years. But whenever my steps led through seasons of sadness and sorrow, my mother’s words often came back to me: “Come what may, and love it.”

How can we love days that are filled with sorrow? We can’t—at least not in the moment. I don’t think my mother was suggesting that we suppress discouragement or deny the reality of pain. I don’t think she was suggesting that we smother unpleasant truths beneath a cloak of pretended happiness. But I do believe that the way we react to adversity can be a major factor in how happy and successful we can be in life.

If we approach adversities wisely, our hardest times can be times of greatest growth, which in turn can lead toward times of greatest happiness.

Although my mother has long since passed to her eternal reward, her words are always with me. I still remember her advice to me given on that day long ago when my team lost a football game: “Come what may, and love it.”

I know why there must be opposition in all things. Adversity, if handled correctly, can be a blessing in our lives. We can learn to love it.