Take a minute and think about your life and about some of the greatest lessons you have learned while walking it out. Not sure about you, but the greatest lessons have come through adversity, haven’t they?

It’s in the grittiness of life where we have the opportunity to face and overcome adversity which will build character, strength and resilience in us — if we let it. Every challenge and every difficult circumstance we successfully confront in the arena of life strengthens our will, our confidence and our ability to conquer future obstacles. The Greek philosopher Herodotus captures this in his quote, “Adversity has the effect of drawing out strength and qualities of a man that would have lain dormant in its absence.

God doesn’t give us overcoming life…He gives us life, as we overcome it’s obstacles.

What we learn by walking through (and surviving) life’s adversities are the very things we can pass on and share with others needing guidance through difficult times. It’s in our own personal stories of survival that have significant impact on others struggling in the valleys of adversity…giving them the life sustaining hope that they’re not alone. Remember those times when the Lord came through for you directly or indirectly through someone that walked your struggle before? It’s so important for us to understand that God is in control of all these things.

When I confront pain in my life, it reminds me of a deeper need I have for God. If we would only stop transferring the pain and let God transform the pain, He will teach us the life changing lessons in the valleys that we would never learn on mountaintops: the things we need to know to help overcome the obstacles in our own adversities and things we one day share with others. Somehow we come to a place on our journey where we find ourselves completely lost, without direction, in valleys of life where we finally come to the end of ourselves and we want to come home. The “somehow” became a reality in my life when the crisis of divorce beat me down to the place where I desperately wanted to come home, and my heart was willing. What I learned through my own place of adversity is that God had been pursuing me with the soft winds of His Spirit through all the hurts, pain, sorrows, and disappointments. It was through these tough journeys where He he began the healing process in my heart until it was restored. Oswald Chambers shares that, “the Holy Spirit is determined that we will have the realization of Jesus Christ in every area of our lives, and He will bring us back to the same point over and over again until we do.”

I remember holding the four fragmented pieces of stone in my hands on my mountaintop experience years ago, not fully understanding the significance that these symbols would come to represent in my life. Standing on the very same mountaintop holding a heartstone in my hand…a heartstone that is not broken, a heartstone that has been beautifully restored, a heartstone to remind me that it is in His nearness that there is healing and that everything broken is made whole and restored in its fullness.

Here are a few “life lessons” I’ve learned through my own struggles:

1) Focus on what is God trying to teach me through this challenge?
2) Understanding that we have choices, so use the challenge to change your future.
3) Be curious when facing the challenge in front of…not furious.

Let me bring it all in…

Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection paved the way for us to focus on the gift of eternal life rather than on the temporary struggles we will encounter in life. The apostle Paul wrote, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” It is that kind of eternity-focused faith that equips us with the grit to adapt and overcome. For “[Jesus’] divine power has given us everything we need.”

John Maxwell tell us that adversity writes our story and if our response is right, the story will be good. I invite you into the pages of my story of overcoming adversity. Walk with me through these pages as I share my story, my journey. Take no more with you than the question, “Can God take the clutter of my life, with everything seemingly stacked against it and redeem it?”

I offer you only my story; walk with me…

Pick up a copy of my book, Heartstone: A Journey out of the midnight of my soul.

Heartstone is a journey of destiny, a story of a life turned upside-down for the best possible reason. Step into the story and discover what happens when a broken life has a head on collision with a broken world! [WARNING] This book isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s for those who have the courage to face life head on and walk it out with God!