Under pressure your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.
~James 1:3-4
Most of what happens around you is completely out of your control. But you do control two important factors: you control your response and you control how much you choose to trust God.
Viktor Frankl, a Jew, was sent to the Nazi death camps during WWII. Frnkl later wrote that while he was a prisoner, the guards stripped him of everything he had. They took his identity, his family, his clothes, even his wedding ring. But no one could take from him his freedom to choose his response. He wrote, "They offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man, but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
What matters in life is not so much what happens to us, but what happens in us. We choose. God uses circumstances to change us, grow us, and make us more like Christ.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
We become better when we choose to respond in faith and believe that every circumstance is a tool God will use to make us more like Christ.