A while ago, a friend of mine asked me to go to lunch. We hadn't seen each other for a while, so naturally I responded with enthusiasm. We got to the venue we had decided on. The regular questions of, "how is the family," and "how is work going" were brought up. I gave the normal responses. Then, the one question I knew she had been tiptoeing around came up; how was she?

You see, I knew how she was doing. I knew she wasn't doing well. I knew she spent a majority of her nights sad, yet, I felt as though I should ask, and possibly give her advice. A moment of silence later, and she smiled and looked at me. She told me of her struggle, of her fears. The conversation eventually lead to her asking how I did "it." When I asked what she meant, she explained that I seemed to always welcome emotionally painful situations into my life.

At first, I was confused; I had never heard of such a thing. I didn't know what she meant, even after her explanation. After the lunch, I was left perplexed and wondering; why do I accepted emotionally painful situations with open arms?

I got to thinking; while we’re lying on the floor broken, after heartbreak of any kind, we tend to wonder when it will end, and when we will ever really feel whole? Will we ever feel ground beneath our feet again? When will we learn to quit putting ourselves in pain?

The answer is this; in order to "feel whole" or to "feel the ground beneath our feet again," we must deal with pain and whether we take it as a positive thing, or a negative thing, is up to us. Pain is a teacher, in a way.

I've always thought that with pain comes learning. When I was younger, I was always scared of being hurt, and hurting others. This was before I knew that pain was a learning experience. Whenever one is hurt, they learn how to adapt, how to deal with what they've been handed. It's natural instinct to adapt to situations, and that's what we should do. Pain pushes us to learn about ourselves; who we are, how we feel things, why we do the things we do.

Learning means growth. Learning is something that is forced, positively, upon us when we are young. To learn is to be educated, and to be educated is something that most desire. Learning can also be seen as growth. When learning, you are pushing your mind, expanding it.

Pain teaches you about what you can and can't handle. It's said that "God gives His hardest battles, to His strongest soldiers."

Growth is change. Growth means maturity, it means change. I used to hate the idea of something being different than it was before, but I've learned that change is for the better.