If It Dosen’t
Kill You, It Will Make You Stronger
by Dannye Williamsen
As you move through life, you meet problems of all
shapes and sizes. Some are hardly worth mentioning; while others
are life threatening or earth-shattering. Yet, they all have one
thing in common. Each problem is merely the wrapping that hides a
gift which has been custom designed to your specifications.
If you choose to entertain yourself in your life with the wrapping
paper, the bow, and the box, that’s perfectly all right. You
can cuss them and discuss them. You can admire all the subtleties
of their design. But, if you are distracted by the problem—that
is, the wrappings—you will never be able to receive the gift
that was prepared especially for you.
No matter what the problem is, the gift it carries has a peculiar
quality. It cannot be delivered directly into your consciousness
or your awareness. You must actively choose to acknowledge it and
to accept it as your own. Only you can remove the wrapping, and only
you can remove the gift from the box.
When you have a problem, that problem does not only exist outside
of you. It is a part of your mental world; it actually emerges from
the pattern of your thoughts and feelings. This is difficult for
some people to accept because on a conscious level, they hold fast
to the idea that they would not choose to be in their present circumstances.
However, it is not that you chose the specific situation that has
manifested. You simply chose attitudes that resonated with the “problem” that
has manifested.
All problems serve one purpose. They cause you to focus your attention
and give you the choice of either looking to the world for answers
or looking to your Creative Source for answers. Problems give you
an opportunity to change your perspective on your life. This is a
good thing because the perspective you now have has led you to the
problem currently manifesting in your experience, regardless of whether
that problem is physical, psychological, or social. Don’t make
a quantum leap, however, and assume that everyone has cancer for
the same reasons, or that everyone who experiences bankruptcy followed
the same path to get there.
Cancer, for example, is an extreme
experience in that it threatens one’s physical existence. Such
an intense problem is an indicator that there is much to be gained
spiritually if one is willing to look past the wrappings—the
pain, the anguish, the fear of death, and the regret for things not
done. Experiencing cancer may simply allow one person to redirect
her focus so she can stop and smell the roses, reconnect with who
she really is, strip away the persona and realize that the riches
she sought were inside her all along. Another may learn the power
of forgiveness because the cancer serves as a powerful metaphor for
how her anger has eaten away at her and destroyed the quality of
her life.
Despite the place of honor many give to suffering, it doesn’t matter how
much you suffer if you never look past the misery and embrace the gift it holds
for you. If, instead, your suffering is your focus, it becomes what is called “useless,
unnecessary suffering” and serves no purpose in your spiritual development.
If you choose to wallow in your problem,
allowing your fear to overwhelm you, the problem will devastate you
physically or psychologically. If you choose only to look to the
external world for answers, you may force yourself into surviving
the present experience, but the problem will return in some other
form. Why? Because Spirit never gives up on you, God always offers
new opportunities for you to embrace your wholeness.
To reach inside your box of suffering to take hold of a new idea,
faith is required. It demands a belief in “the substance of
things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” It requires
seeing something beyond the problem itself. The measure of your faith
is your ability to acknowledge and accept that new idea into your
world.
If you do choose to open the door of your soul inward toward God
to search for answers, you will come out on the other side of this
experience with a greater understanding of yourself than ever before,
which is the purpose of your life on this earth. You are here to
learn how to express as a creative being, one made in the image and
likeness of God, by continually availing yourself of every opportunity
that diminishes the darkness cast by the belief in separation between
you and God and you and others.
So, any problem that doesn’t kill you, either physically or
psychologically, does indeed make you stronger!
