"Observe always that everything is the result of change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and make new ones like them."    

-Marcus Aurelius

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. ~Victor Frankl

Lyrics to the song "Blessings" by Laura Story...love it!

We pray for blessings
We pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom
Your voice to hear
And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough
All the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we'd have faith to believe

Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
And what if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win
We know the pain reminds this heart
That this is not, this is not our home

Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
And what if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy
And what if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise

To think bad thoughts is really the easiest thing in the world.  If you leave your mind to itself it will spiral down into ever increasing unhappiness.  To think good thoughts, however, requires effort. This is one of the things that discipline - training - is about.
-James Clavell, from his novel "Shogun"

"Our ultimate purpose in life is not physical; it is spiritual. It is to come to know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. That is what Christ the Lord said when he began his great prayer in Gethsemane. The gospel is given to us so that we can be guided to the objective given us—to know the Father and the Son. It is as though he said to me, “Son, here is a map and a compass. You are at this spot, and your objective is to reach this other spot. You can do it quickly, or you can take a long time. The sooner you do it, the happier you will be."

-Elder S. Dilworth Young

"If for a while the harder you try, the harder it gets, take heart. So it has been with the best people who ever lived."

 Jeffrey R. Holland

"The passage of time has not altered the capacity of the Redeemer to change men’s lives. As he said to the dead Lazarus, so he says to you and me: “come forth.” Come forth from the despair of doubt. Come forth from the sorrow of sin. Come forth from the death of disbelief. Come forth to a newness of life. Come forth."

-Thomas S. Monson

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”

~C.S. Lewis