"Okay God, what do I do with this?"
It was a question Judy Busch asked as she stood at the grave site of her 7-year-old granddaughter, Kathy, who had just been murdered. It was Feb. 1990, the funeral was over and now came the really hard part.
Judy spent the next 20 years of her life answering that question by becoming Oklahoma's pioneering victims' rights advocate. Her legacy of helping crime victims' families continues today, even beyond her own death in 2010.
Hopefully, most of us will never face what Judy did. Yet most certainly we will face challenges in life that will require of us an answer to that same question; "What do I do with this?"
Maybe your child is sick, or you have lost your job, or a friend has betrayed you. There are tremendously difficult events that we experience over which we have no control.
The good news is, we can control our answer to that simple question-what will we do with it?
And it is our answer to that question that will determine, even more than the bad thing that has happened, how the rest of our life will go.
Will we become angry and bitter? Will we withdraw and quit? Will we feel sorry for ourselves that something awful has happened?
The only part of the equation in life we have control over is how we choose to respond to great challenges. It is a spectacular opportunity.
As you face the current challenges in your life, consider that question. What are you going to do with it?
Like my friend, Judy Busch, I hope our answer is a life lived with integrity, courage and compassion.