My apologies for the length of this post. Its natural for people to "thank God" when things are going well. Since my inlaws are a different faith - one thing I like about their philosophy is.....they'll say "thank God" when things are going bad too. They still can feel sad or grief, but they don't blame God. I also think life just happens sometimes and bad things happen to good people. I don't think of them as punishments.

For example my father died of cancer when I was 2, leaving 5 kids under 16 at the age of 34. He was a good person and there's no explaining why it happened. Babies also die. I try my best to make the best out of bad life circumstances, similar to what Big Mama said. This is where the belief of thanking God (being grateful) comes in - its "making lemonade out of lemons" and appreciating things could be worse. For those who don't believe in a higher power - they can focus on being grateful during hard times and this calms the emotions.

I also believe life is journey of learning and we can choose to become bitter or better people. When my brother ended his life 5 years ago, I made the conscious decision not to let it ruin me. Instead I use him as an example to live and teach others how to cope with emotional pain. I've also learned a lot from my marriage problem - its been the toughest thing, coping with my resentment and pain. I've learned that I can still find some compassion even the person doesn't deserve it.

The other day when I was standing in line at the grocery store.....there was mother with a 9 yr old boy with Down Syndrome. I'm sure some families think its a disadvantage knowing they might have a child with this, but some families consider it a gift. This little boy was bursting with happiness and he was extremely helpful - putting all the groceries in the conveyor belt. He then said "look mom I'm all done". The he ran to help her bag the groceries....he was anxious to help. When the cashier gave them the change, he said "thank you and have a nice day". He was the most helpful and polite child I've seen and I told the cashier he was a "sweetheart". The cashier said "look at him" and he was beaming.

Yes there are awful bad things done on purpose and I can't explain them, but all we can do is try to be strong and make the best of it. I firmly believe we can learn important life lessons if we look for them. Its easy to be accepting and grateful when life is smooth, but we can also be this way when life throws us curve balls because it can always be worse. This doesn't invalidate the pain, it just makes it more tolerable. I didn't wake up this way but learned this from the negative experiences. There's also days where I'm weak / feel sorry for myself.