Crises

Something from this week's discussions that I found interesting was that the Chinese character for crisis is equivalent to the characters for danger + opportunity. We learned that a situation can be viewed as a crisis or as an opportunity, the outcome depends on how we handle it. A crisis can actually be a blessing in disguise. It is important to try to see the big picture.

I especially liked this statement from a gospel standpoint: Heavenly Father loves us so much, he doesn't want our lives to always go smoothly because it is during the crises that we experience the most growth. Without crises we would return to Him exactly the same as when we left.

We also learned about different types of stressors. I will use my brother's car accident as an example. This was an external event, nonnormative, nonambiguous, definitely nonvolitional, I guess it was acute and I'm not sure on the cumulative or isolated. One way for Darren to cope with this tragedy was that he needed to be around people all of the time, because when he was alone with his thoughts I think he would start to blame himself for what happened and he needed to know that it was an accident. He and many others also turned to prayer and the Atonement for comfort.