Adversity has a way of demanding our attention.
It arrives loud, disruptive, and uninvited. It presses on every vulnerable place at once and dares us to decide what it will make of us. Not everyone realizes this, but adversity itself is not the deciding factor in who we become.
Focus is.
Two people can walk through the same fire.
One is consumed.
The other is forged.
The difference is not strength.
It is not luck.
It is where the eyes are fixed when everything hurts.
ADVERSITY ALWAYS OFFERS A CHOICE
When hardship comes, it presents us with two paths.
We can focus on what is being taken from us,
or we can focus on what is being formed within us.
This is not denial.
Pain is real. Loss is real. Grief is real.
Naming suffering is not weakness. But allowing it to dominate our vision — to become the lens through which we see everything — is not healing either.
Whatever we crown, we empower.
PAIN CAN SHAPE OR IT CAN SHATTER
There is a quiet lie many of us absorb: that suffering automatically ruins people.
It doesn’t.
Suffering reveals people.
It exposes what lives just beneath the surface — our patterns, our reflexes, our beliefs about ourselves and about God. Some come through hardship hardened and bitter. Others emerge tempered, steady, and strangely gentle.
The fire does not decide.
The heart does.
What we focus on determines whether pain becomes poison or purpose.
FOCUS IS AN ACT OF STEWARDSHIP
Choosing focus during adversity is not about pretending things are fine. It is about deciding what will be allowed to define us.
When our focus shifts — even slightly — from Why is this happening to me? to What is being formed in me?, something changes. We stop shrinking inward and begin standing upright again.
Endurance is built.
Discernment is sharpened.
Compassion deepens.
Adversity did not arrive to destroy us.
It arrived to prepare us.
A LIVING PICTURE OF CHOSEN FOCUS
Just yesterday, I was given a living picture of what chosen focus looks like.
My daughter-in-law sent me video after video throughout the day — not because things were going smoothly, but because they weren’t. The kind of day that could easily end in raised voices, clenched jaws, muttered curses, or silent surrender.
Instead, she invited me into the chaos. There she was, video chatting while following my son down the roadway with a full load of round bales ahead of her. Sadly, one of the bales was coming undone during transit and strips of hay were blowing loose — streaking across her windshield like a blizzard. A brand-new baby lamb rode beside her in a laundry basket screaming its pitiful Maaaaa Maaaaa nonstop. Two toddlers full of energy and excitement hollering in the backseat while one decided to paint the SUV window with red children’s nail polish.
The moment was loud.
Messy.
Fully ripe for frustration.
And yet — that sweet Lil’ Momma was driving cautiously down the road laughing. No anger, no tears….just filled with infectious laughter.
Not ignoring the chaos.
Not pretending it wasn’t hard.
But breathing through it. Choosing presence. Guiding her children toward silver linings instead of spirals.
She turned what could have been a breaking point into a bonding moment.
What could have been stress into shared joy.
What could have been overwhelm into grace.
That is chosen focus.
Not because the situation deserved it — but because her children did.
THE OTHER WAY THIS COULD HAVE GONE
Many people I know would have handled that moment very differently.
Voices would have risen. Children would have been rushed, scolded, or pushed to tears. Frustration would have spilled out sideways — curses under the breath, sharp words, clenched teeth. The question Why, Lord? Why? would have surfaced, not as prayer, but as protest.
And to be clear — that response is human.
Stress narrows our vision. Chaos presses our limits. When pressure mounts, what lives just beneath the surface tends to spill out.
But this is precisely why focus matters.
Because in moments like these, adults are not just reacting — they are teaching. Children are learning whether difficulty is something to fear or something to navigate. Whether frustration leads to connection or collapse. Whether hardship is met with blame or with breath.
The chaos didn’t change.
The focus did.
And that made all the difference.
THE PEACE THAT REACHES BEYOND THE MOMENT
And I would be remiss not to say this: her demeanor did something else entirely.
It brought me peace.
A deep, humble peace — the kind that settles quietly and stays.
To witness her temperament in the middle of strain, to see her choose laughter over anger, breath over blame, grace over eruption — it reassured me in a way words rarely do. Not because life was easy for her in that moment, but because she was steady.
Her laughter was not denial.
It was discernment.
And that choice — repeated in small, ordinary moments — creates a kind of safety that travels far beyond the chaos itself. It settles children. It steadies families. It brings peace even to those watching from a distance.
WHEN WE SHIFT THE VIEW
How many of us find ourselves in moments like these with our focus fixed entirely on the adversity — on the disruption, the weight, the unfairness of it all?
And yet, in choosing to shift our view — even slightly — the canvas begins to soften.
Like a kaleidoscope turning in the hand, the pieces themselves do not disappear, but their arrangement changes. Nothing is erased. Nothing is denied. And still, the picture transforms.
In that shift, laughter finds room.
Joy slips in alongside the trial.
Growth, discernment, and grace emerge — not because hardship is gone, but because it no longer defines the frame.
FORGED, NOT BROKEN
We do not waste our suffering.
We steward it.
And in time, we discover something quietly powerful: what was meant to undo us became the very thing that made us ready.
Focus does not remove the fire.
It decides what the fire produces.
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
— Viktor Frankl
2 Corinthians 4:16–18
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.”
If you find yourself in the thick of it today, take a breath. You are not failing — you are forming. A gentle shift of focus can soften the entire picture. Grace meets us there.
Sometimes that shift looks like nothing more than a breath.
A hand on the chest.
A pause long enough for the nervous system to remember it is safe.
May grace meet you wherever you choose it,
and may your choosing become an invitation of peace to those around you.
Love & Grace,
Tina N. Campbell | Scribed in Light
Scribed In Light 
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