A month or two ago I was too bitter to see anything positive coming out of depression. Nobody should have to suffer like that. I was resenting the things that happened to me that gave depression the power to take over my entire life since childhood, and considering all that I might be doing right now if I hadn't been limited by all that junk.

Then the lessons that I have been assigned to teach for church started hitting on a common theme. When you teach something you learn it much better than if you just listen to it from someone else, and my lessons very often target something that is a current problem for me, forcing me to examine and usually change my attitude on the subject. Sometiemes it's annoying, but it's always to my benefit.

Anyway, first there was a lesson about adversity and how we couldn't grow or progress without it. In fact, the specific turbulence that we are going through is often tailor made just for us in order to help or cause us to develop to our fullest potential. We probably don't see it that way when we're in the middle of it and adversity keeps piling up on top of us and weighing us down, but later you can look back and see the growth. The message: "Trust God - He knows what He's doing, even when it doesn't seem like it to us at the time."

The next lesson was titled "Be of Good Cheer." That's enough right there to set off my bad attitude. Of course, it's easy to be happy in good times, but if we can have a good attitude about the adversity too, it makes life a lot easier. There was a lot about having inner peace even when the world is anything but peaceful.

Next was a conference with that same theme, "Be of Good Cheer." I didn't teach, but was in the choir. Same basic message but they did a whole lot better job with it than I did. I wrote down a few quotes:

<font color=red>"The problem with most teachers is they think they are the teacher." </font color=red>

<font color=purple> "Happiness is the design of our existence."</font color=purple>

<font color=green>"Ultimate hope and daily grumpiness are irreconcilable."</font color=green>

I have been getting my attitude adjusted little by little. So, okay, Heather, I can see growth in myself that would not have been possible without having experienced depression. I admit it.

Once in a while I even wonder how people can grow and develop without having this experience. Well, I think almost everybody does at least to some extent, and everyone experiences their own kind of adversity. We can have a good attitude and learn from it, or just wallow and be miserable. Maybe being stubborn about it keeps us stuck there until we learn our lesson so we can move on.

I think that examining the problems and what we can learn from them or even how this can help us to make a difference in the world, like we have been doing in this thread, is good and productive and will help us to get the maximum profit from our adversity or experience. This all ties in with the quotes that Heidu posted over in the General section too.

Thanks again for all of your ideas. Thinking about these things is really helping me.

I hope this isn't as full of spelling errors and typos at the rest of what I've been posting lately. I've got mistakes all over. Guess I'm multitasking too much or something. So, I hope you know what I meant, anyway.

<font color=blue>Life is filled with tragedy; if you let it overwhelm you, you cannot enjoy life's innocent pleasures. -Robert Heinlein</font color=blue>