The effect of hard times...

I'm still searching in the Bible for the life-truth that my daughters and I often quote from one of our favorite movies, Steel Magnolias: "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." That's just too true to not be included in the Scripture.
I am certain that the effect of hard times is one of the most clarifying signs of Christian character. Going through a crisis can be just the experience that opens your heart to others in difficult circumstances. Going through a hard time can also be just the experience that makes you more insecure, afraid and cold to the suffering of others.
Though we rarely choose the tragedies that invade our lives, we always choose our response. We may not have chosen the economic downturn, the job loss, the cancer diagnosis, the broken marriage, the premature death of a loved one. But in every instance, we choose its affect on us.
I have seen both sides of this. Sometimes, the tragic death of a loved one turns people into the very best Stephen ministers, friends and compassionate church members. Hardship can make a heart more open to the suffering of others, more tender to the struggles and griefs that others carry.
Hardship can also create a hardened shell around a heart. Have you noticed that sometimes people who went through a hard time carry that struggle like a badge of honor and don't blink when others suffer? "I went through it; it won't hurt them." A classic example of that is the doctors who trained under "old school" regimens of inhumane numbers of hours on call as interns and residents--80, sometimes over 100 hours per week on call. Now, with new guidelines surfacing to limit the number of hours that interns and residents can be on call to a more reasonable 60 hours a week, sometimes it is old school physicians who raise the loudest objections. Seems to me they would be the most sympathetic and glad for something to change for the good of others (both doctors AND patients)
I see the same dynamic surfacing in conversations about salaries. "Well," one layperson said to me, "I didn't get a salary raise this year. So I don't think the preacher should get a raise either." As the conversation went on, it was clear that not getting a salary raise had really hurt the layperson. So wouldn't it make more Christian love sense for the layperson to say, "I know how much it hurts to not get a raise. I want something better for my preacher..." (or my daughter, or my neighbor). Is this a "misery loves company" response?
I came into the ministry during the very early days of female clergy. I don't date back to John Wesley, but I came in less than 20 years after the full ordination of women was approved (in 1956). I had a hard time. I qualified for elder's ordination under 4 different Disciplines. And that was just the beginning of the obstacles, the ridicule and the opposition that I went through. But, I put those hard experiences to work to make me an avid advocate of a better church for my daughters and their daughters. It would never occur to me to say, "Well, I had it hard, so it's just fine if they experience prejudice and opposition."
Hardship -- in whatever form--is painful. But hardship is downright tragic if it hardens instead of opens a heart.