I used to subscribe to "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". Time and experience have taught me that this is not always true...adversity is adversity...no point in glossying it up as a useful and beneficial experience that will build character (though it can and it sure helps with developing empathy...but... sometimes it does neither). However, when you do look back on those periods in your life that weren't so great or aren't so great that was and is the best you could do at the time in dealing with them. We all try to make lemons into lemonade. There's no point in beating yourself up over adversity. Your value is not in the sum of good or bad experiences you have in life..they aren't doled out according to your worth.
I never really understood this until a school assembly where the chaplain put this ten dollar note through all sorts of things...stomped on it and put it through a whole heap of abuses..hundreds and hundreds of children saying yep I still want it, falling over themselves and semi-rioting......I have no doubt God sees the value in everyone with just as much enthusiasm as those kids screaming their heads off that they'd take that ten dollars off her hands....yep, even for those that have been scruffed up a little.
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"It's looking crook," said Daniel Croke;
"Bedad, it's cruke, me lad,
For never since the banks went broke
Has seasons been so bad."
And so around the chorus ran
"It's keepin' dry, no doubt."
"We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"Before the year is out."
 John O'Brien
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