You must make up your mind to the prospect of sustaining a certain measure of pain and trouble in you'r passage through life.

I've been extraordinarily fortunate that I've been able to go live a very active, stressful life. And I don't believe that my heart disease changed me for the worst.

I've changed a lot but I'm still Smitty. Hopefully I'm more mature and I'm a little wiser, and I plan on by the grace of God finishing well, and I'm more passionate than I ever have been in my life.

Usually life's greatest gifts come wrapped in adversity.

Nothing is more important than to learn how to maintain a life of purpose in the midst of painful adversity.

Life is all about learning and one of the most memorable ways of learning something is by messing up.

If you pour a pail full of water on the floor of your house, it makes a great show, but if you throw it into the sea, there is no sign of it. So, afflictions considered in themselves, we think are very great, but let them be considered with the sea of god's mercies we enjoy, and then they are not so much, they are nothing in comparison.

Do not think, Oh, that I were delivered from all these afflictions and troubles here in this world! If you were, then you would have more ease yourself, but this is a way of honoring God, and manifesting the excellence of grace here, when you are in this conflict of temptation, which God shall not have from you in Heaven.

Know that this is the excellence of grace in a Christian, to be fitted for any condition; not only to say, if it were this or that, but if it were any.

You do not find one godly man who came out of an affliction worse than when he went into it; though for a while he was shaken, yet at last he was better for an affliction. But a great many godly men, you find, have been worse for their prosperity.

This was the excellency of the Grace of God in the Apostle, that he was fit for any condition.

I know the journey seems so long You feel you're walking on your own But there has never been a step Where you've walked out all alone Troubled soul don't lose your heart Cause joy and peace he brings And the beauty that's in store Outweighs the hurt of life's sting