PREFACE

      On a warm North Carolina October afternoon, I married the love of my life in a rose garden. Surrounded on all sides by thousands of roses in every color, it was one of the most amazing, love-filled, and picturesque moments of my life. How could I have known then that these gorgeous blooms were harbingers of the pain and despair—and later the beauty—that was to come?

      I spent my second wedding anniversary alone, not knowing where my husband had gone for the day. It seemed that his work had become more important to him than me, and that had caused a lot of tension between us. When he finally came home that night, he told me that I was not his soulmate and that he didn’t think we should have married. After many tears and a long conversation where we tried to sort things out, he surprised me by driving us to the rose garden where we had married. Perhaps this was a sort of apology gesture on his part.

      It was nighttime by then, and I walked slowly, alone, between the rows of roses in the dark. The lattices were several feet taller than me, forming a maze of colorful blooms. The fragrance seemed richer than on the day we were married. Later I would read somewhere that the fragrance of roses is 40 percent more intense at night. I remember the deliciously magical feel of the garden in the moonlight and the buttery softness of the petals I couldn’t help touching as I walked by. I noticed that many of the roses were curled up tight in a bud for the night, but some of the roses were still wide open, in full bloom. It made me think about how much beauty—how much life—can exist even under a veil of darkness.

      A year later, my marriage and my life would be plunged into darkness and I would have the choice that each of those roses faced that night: to open up to life in the dark or to shut my eyes and close myself off from the pain. The best decision I ever made was to bloom in the dark. I want to help you make the same decision, regardless of the type of loss you have experienced, and reap the same rewards.

       Not “Why,” but “What Now?”

      If you are anything like me, you’ve grown tired of people telling you that God or the universe has a purpose for the pain you are experiencing. I don’t disagree with this concept. In fact, the message of this book is built upon this very idea. However, I had gotten weary of what I perceived to be a trite response. It seemed like they said it more for their peace of mind than for mine. It felt like being given a Band-Aid for an enormous, gaping wound. It just wasn’t enough.

      After my husband left, I would ask myself “why?” in hundreds of desperate ways: Why wasn’t I good enough? Why didn’t God intervene and make him come back? Why weren’t any of my efforts to win him back working? I spent countless hours in therapy, journaling, praying, and speaking with friends, trying to understand why my husband had left. I thought doing so would help me figure out the purpose of the pain I was experiencing over my loss. I also thought I needed to fully understand why this situation had happened before I could begin to accept that it had happened. But instead of revealing the reason for my loss or the purpose of the pain, asking these “why” questions only led me deeper and deeper into despair and hopelessness.

      There can certainly be wisdom and maybe some relief in understanding what leads to a painful experience. In my case, if I could identify how or what I had contributed to our breakdown, I could then work diligently to address the issues and not to repeat the mistakes. After many, many months of agonizing, I finally realized the “why” wasn’t nearly as important as the “what now?” Eventually, it was the “what now?” that helped me to transform my pain into healing and new growth.

       Don’t Waste Your Sorrows

      A friend gave me more than a Band-Aid one day when she sent me a quote from the well-known reverend and scholar, Dr. Timothy Keller: “How you respond to the troubles in your life will go a long way toward whether or not you ever, ever, ever develop courage, ever develop patience, ever develop compassion, ever develop sobriety and humility, ever develop any of those things. Don’t waste your sorrows.”

      This created a significant change in my perspective. I had been living like a person driving a car with my eyes fixed on the rearview mirror: “What happened to my marriage?! Why, even with my best efforts, could I not fix it?” These obsessive questions and this way of viewing my situation were setting me up for a big crash. It was time to let go of the whys and start focusing on the more important questions: How was I going to move on? Who did I want to become as a result? And, what did I want my life to look like going forward?

      Dr. Keller’s words illuminate the purpose of our pain. Troubles are opportunities to become more—more courageous, more patient, more compassionate, more humble. We cannot develop these or other essential character virtues without going through a situation that calls for their use. For someone to call you patient, you must demonstrate patience. That means at some point you will have to wait for something, and likely that waiting will cost you something. Certainly it will cost you time, but often waiting costs us much more than that. To be told that you are courageous means you will have to face something that is scary and uncertain. To be called humble you will have to give up something, such as recognition that was due to you.

      You see, it’s not the trouble that causes us to become better people. Participating in life makes trouble inevitable, and not everyone comes out the other side in a better state. We all go down one of three roads when we encounter trouble. Trouble can destroy us. Trouble can leave us unchanged. Or, trouble can help to transform us. It takes conscious work and determination to choose to be transformed in the midst of trouble.

      We do not need to seek out suffering so that we can become “more.” I dislike suffering as much as the next person, and I would never have willingly chosen the painful events that have occurred in my life. What I’m saying is that if we’re experiencing trouble and suffering, we have been given an opportunity. What we do with this opportunity is up to us.

      To become “more” as a result of the suffering, we have to choose carefully and dig deep to figure out how we should best respond to our situation. We need to look at each sorrow as something we can use to spur regrowth. That’s what Keller means when he says “don’t waste your sorrows.” I wanted my sorrow to end as quickly as possible. I spent a long time thinking that the only way to end