Oppurtunity or Difficulty?

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
Winston Churchill

I am not going to follow up on this quote and pretend that I am always one or the other. I wish that I could always see the opportunity and not the difficulty, but I suppose that if that were the case I would never be grateful for the opportunities, considering I'd never see the difficulties.

A few weird things happened last night that brought up some feelings and memories of the past.
In the past 3 yrs I've learned quite a bit about life. One of the most important things being that I can not change what others do or think. As much as I would like to believe that my words and actions greatly effect those around me, I have to wake up. It has been three years to the day that I found out a friend of mine took his own life. I had never had to deal with something like that before then and I did not deal with it for 5 months after it happened. I chose to numb myself instead. I guess I chose the quote above, because there are a lot of things that happen in our lives that we certainly do not plan on. I am not trying to say that there is opportunity within tragedies, but I do know that lessons are learned. After being angry at everything, and that took a long time, I was able to talk HONESTLY about certain things I thought I would never say aloud to anyone Ever.
I began to write a lot about these feelings I was having and how in the past I did certain things. I know this is vague and probably kind of hard to follow, but it is not necessary to get into details.
Little did I know that there would be women who would talk to me about the exact things I was too terrified to discuss aloud. And then eventually I would be the one to break the ice with others as to the thoughts I was justifying in my mind. What I am trying to get at, is although horrible things happen in life, we can get through it with the help of others. And when we do, we can help others who will experience the same pain and loss that we have in the future. I used to be so ashamed at the fact that I was so self centered when it came to death.
It was as though I would think that whatever loss it was, was only happening to me. But then when you take a minute and realize that someone just loss their son/daughter or mom/dad it brings it back to reality. This particular loss from three yrs ago was one of the worst. It had a lot to do with my lifestyle then too, but I felt as though I did not deserve to be happy.
Anytime that I felt the need to laugh I would suppress it. I felt that I could never be happy again. And when I saw others, it pissed me off that they were not constantly depressed like me. Although the select few I stayed near were, that is why I gravitated to them. We had that in common, our 'sorrow.' As time passed I saw that people were allowing the sorrow to go, they were becoming happy or at least normal again, I refused.
I believe now that I had to put myself through that to get where I am today. Not to say that death will not effect me, but now I firmly believe that our loved ones would never wish sorrow on us. They would want us to enjoy our lives, if not for ourselves, then for them. Life has so many opportunities and challenges, but the fact is we are alive today to partake in them. Why walk around this earth dead?
This way of viewing grief took awhile, but thankfully it got to me. So 3 yrs later, I stop to remember, but am thankful that today I can smile. Smile at the fact that I am alive and I have a chance to enjoy the world. But I am optimistic because I know that this life is only a little notch compared to our eternity. When we are out of this world looking back to our earthly lives we will think, it was so quick. We have alllll of eternity to be with All of those we love and of course to help those who out last us here, to make sure they make it to us. It is a circle of the spirit. So the opportunity in the difficulty of death is the fact that we now have one more person rooting for us on the other side. They are going to make sure that we don't mess up too bad what we are supposed to do here in this life. And all of our reward will be eternity with each other.
There is a sign that I saw about 2 yrs ago at a place I go to often. It read:

"Please Lord, teach us to laugh again,
but God don't ever let us forget that we cried"

When I saw this the first time, I cried. I cried because I knew what it was to not laugh. The pain that happens within your soul. And when I was able to laugh again, it was as if I felt human once more. My loss of emotions, or control over them, was not just due to grief. There was some other things that I was experiencing. And at the time I used to wonder, why, why me? Today I know that had it not happened, I would not be who I am today.
I would never wish upon my worst enemy, my experience. But I can say that I completely appreciate every human emotion today, because they were lost for awhile. While writing this blog, I just found a few more things to add to my gratitude list. So I want to thank the blog world for giving me a place to open up, I learned a little more about me just now.
Today's lesson is that we have opportunities because we are alive today. Should we chose to make them difficult, we can, but it's just easier not to. As so many have said before me 'pain is the touch stone to spiritual growth, but suffering is optional' well said, my friend, well said.