Even in the moments of your greatest anguish, you often find unexpected blessings alongside and commingled with your losses.

Sometimes you had to let a person stumble, let 'em fall flat out—no matter how much it hurt to see—before they could come to grips with how bad off they were. Because until a person realized that, there wasn't much helping them.

An alcoholic father, poverty, my own juvenile diabetes, the limited English my parents spoke - although my mother has become completely bilingual since. All these things intrude on what most people think of as happiness.

The man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his circumstances.

To a brave man, good and bad luck are like his left and right hand. He uses both.

As such, I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.

And thus we rust Life's iron chain Degraded and alone: And some men curse, and some men weep, And some men make no moan: But God's eternal Laws are kind And break the heart of stone

Before God can use a man greatly he must wound him deeply.

A world where everything was easy would be a nursery for babies, but not at all a fit place for men.

I have changed drastically because I allow myself to not just grieve and feel down.

It is well known that great art, great music and great literature can emerge out of great pain. This does not lessen the reality of the suffering of the artist, composer or writer, but it points to something creative and redemptive in the human person, made in the image of God, which can bring forth a thing of beauty in the midst of surrounding ugliness, brutality and evil. Nowhere is this more true than in the book of Lamentations.

So your desire is to do nothing? Well, you shall not have a week, a day, an hour, free from oppression. You shall not be able to lift anything without agony. Every passing minute will make your muscles crack. What is feather to others will be a rock to you. The simplest things will become difficult. Life will become monstrous about you. To come, to go, to breathe, will be so many terrible tasks for you. Your lungs will feel like a hundred-pound weight.