One of the hardest things in life is to embrace and accept difficult situations as being sources for grace and growth. It's all well and good for Buddhist teachers to tell us that there is no such thing, really, as "self," so we shouldn't let apparently trying circumstances get to us—since there really isn't an "us" or a "me" to be gotten to. It's all well and good for Christian teachers to enjoin us to be kind, loving, patient, and so on, but there are times and situations that push us to the limit. Difficult personalities are difficult. Insensitivity hurts. People do things to us or to others that we care about, and it also hurts.Without going all mushy pious, it is really and truly true that it is exactly at these points of pain, tension, and conflict that our faith either means something and shapes the way we deal with the garbage of life or it doesn't. Easy times don't teach us wisdom. Smooth sailing doesn't afford us opportunities to improve our spiritual nautical skills. Our failures and lapses in dealing with hard "stuff" teach us important life lessons, and when we occasionally see an apparently intractable problem melt away because we (or someone we know) exercised spiritual patience and wisdom—when such things happen we gain a humble sense of satisfaction that reinforces our spiritual journey.
Some problems have to be dealt with head on, some indirectly. Some there's not a blame thing we can do about them and just have to learn to live with them. Some times prayer helps. Some times, honestly, it doesn't. The whole thing about the life of faith is learning from life's difficult situations the necessity of navigating the rough waters in faith. There's no magic in it and faith doesn't make the pain just go away, but at the end of the day a life lived in faith gets us through the garbage with less damage (to others as well as ourselves) and more gain (for others as well as ourselves) than not. Ya pray, ya think, and ya try to discern where the Spirit leads. It's a messy process at best, but it is also the hand we've been dealt in life—all of us. And it is not without its rewards provided we navigate the whitewater in faith and with the skills living if faith teaches us.
