Happiness after Adversity

I have been working on a project the last couple of days, I was at a stopping place so I decided to take a break and relax. My mind is always going and it is hard to shut the thoughts off sometimes, so I thought I should maybe just write them down. Rich just left for the airport to fly to Denver and help Spencer and Annie drive one of their vehicles home. It will be fun to see them again, it seems like forever. I'm sure the boys are getting big and they probably won't even recognize us or even know who we are. I was looking at the t.v. last night to find something to watch and there was a program on channel 8 that caught my eye. It was about happiness. There was a guy who was traveling all over the country talking to people about happiness. He interviewed one guy who had won the lottery and talked to him about how his life had changed. Then he talked to a woman who had ovarian cancer and had lost all her hair. She looked like someone from the play "Hair", I have never seen a mane like hers. She had about ten wigs and depending on how she felt that day, that would be how she decided which of her wigs she would wear. Now I haven't been known for my happy, chipper, positive outlook on life, personality, but as I watched this program I felt so blessed that the trials I have had haven't killed me yet. One of the guys on this program mentioned that people go through terrible experiences in their lives and almost all of them end up becoming as happy as they were before they went through their tragedy. I thought that was so interesting, "we will all end up as happy as we were before Kamber passed away." Can that be possible? I think the longer we are able to deal with the sadness, pain, denial, heartache and everything else that goes with the trial, we still can be happy again in the future. It changes who we are, but I think in a good way. The guy was talking to a Vietnam veteran who had been shot down in the war and was tortured and kept for eight years in solitary confinement. He said that they asked prisoners of war if they could take the experience away, would they? All of them said, "no, they wouldn't take the experience away because they learned so much about themselves and realized how strong they really were." I have often wondered if we could bring Kamber back would we? I know at the beginning I would have changed places with her in a heartbeat, but that wasn't the pathway I was to walk. I don't know why we need adversity in our lives, I guess that is the only way we can be just a little bit like the Savior. I hate adversity, but I know that our life is made up of experiences and that is what makes us grow and learn. My hope for the new year is to become as happy as I was in July of 2008 in the near future.