Life doesn’t just happen to you. Life happens FOR you.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I was especially grateful for forgiveness and a chance to start all over again. I can't imagine what I would have become if I had just wallowed in my own garbage.

Will people become bitter and angry at themselves? At society? At the world at large? At God? Will they forever be ruled by their past, by their post-traumatic nightmares? Are their lives just going to be nothing but a long memory of pain — and can we blame them, really? Or will we celebrate the lives of those who died, the lives of those who struggle, and all those who are suffering today?

That might take our experiences of suffering and use it to help others, so that all our suffering isn't in vain — even if it just means helping yourself. We need to stand up, to speak, to live to show that the hell that is life can be overcome.

I have had many cryptic conversations about my children over the years, especially as they have gotten older. If you're a longtime listener of my program, you know that we have had very frightening issues with a couple of my kids in particular.

I recently went to an event with my son. It was remarkable. I was standing next to him in a crowd of 14,000 people. At one point, you had to scream out your biggest obstacle at the top of your lungs. So I'm screaming something and I hear my son say, "I can't be greater than my father." I was both humbled and horrified by it, because my son just needs to be himself, and he'll be greater than me.

He’s changed, and I credit the event for this. It is remarkable to see him go from a young man who was confused and lost to a man who is determined to do whatever it is he sets his mind to without hesitation. He's even walking straighter. This is a kid who at times has been completely hopeless and thought, "I'll never amount to anything. I'll never do anything. Why even try?" This is somebody who filled himself with this negative tape of not being worthy, playing it over and over again in his head. We tried and tried and tried and tried, and this worked — at least, as long as he chooses to do it.

I think that is the point. He didn't change. He just stopped believing the lies that he was telling himself. He just started to believe "I can do it" in a world that teaches us that you are not good enough. This is the point of advertising. You are not complete unless you wear this brand, buy this house, go to this place. Even your smile is a certain way on social media, or else it's not good enough to post. Or so they say.

Everything is telling you “you’re not enough.” Then on top of it, it feels at times like the world is just turning inside out and doing all kinds of things to you. You say, “Really, God? Do I need this too?”

Some people just accept it and say, “Oh, that's God's will. God will not give you something you can't handle.” You know, I’m not God — obviously — and I don’t know His will. I certainly don’t know it for you. I barely know it for me.

But I do know we’re supposed to be happy and productive. We’re supposed to do good things. It’s amazing to me how many things our bodies do that reinforce good things. You exercise, you feel better. It creates endorphins, and all of a sudden, your mood goes up. If you go serve people, it does the same thing. It rewards you for doing the good things. It’s an amazing system, and I don’t know how anybody can look at that system and say there is no God.

We’re not here to have passive acceptance. We can’t throw up our hands and say, “Yeah, well, I’m never going to make it. That's God’s will." No. We have to accept the things that we can’t change, but we also have to look at the things that we can change.

This is one of the reasons I have a hard time with my job sometimes because I'm telling you a lot of the things that you can't change. You might be able to change them with the election. But that isn’t where you're going to find your answers. You're not going to find them in a politician.

I feel defeated sometimes because I feel like I’m not giving you any answers that are worth anything at all. But then again, we all affect each other’s lives. We're all here for a reason, and it's spiritually healthy to remember that we don’t have the final say. We don't control the final outcomes. Sometimes our best efforts fail. Sometimes our best intentions are for nothing. Sometimes our prayers are answered in the negative.

But it’s also important to spin things around and maybe think that things aren't being done to you. What if we just look at life and say, “This is happening for me. It will require sacrifice and suffering and faith and everything else. But maybe, if we choose to see it in a different light, we'll be better.” If we're hungry, maybe we feed the poor. We care for the orphan. We protect the widow. We love the stranger.

If we're in such a bad, dark place, wouldn't it make it easier for us to see others in that place and relate to them, unlike anyone else can relate?

Over the holiday, I thought of faith being an active thing, to do the job that we feel God has given us. If it’s good and it lifts people, if it builds and not destroys, if it makes things better, it's probably God’s will. Especially if you don’t want to do it. That’s how you probably know it’s God’s will.

But it doesn't have to be active outside. It needs to be active in us.

We survive through the darkness. We make it. And it makes future generations smarter and stronger, should we choose. My addiction, my abuse of alcohol and everything else, all the bad things I've done, it turns out have proven I can break the pattern of generational addiction and abuse. I can break that pattern.

But more importantly, perhaps, in some ways, all that darkness happened for me. At least that's the way I interpreted it. So I can relate. I can help.

Whatever is happening in your life is happening for you, at least in part. In a world where babies get sick and die, where a drunk driver will leave you in a lifelong coma, where Hamas can do what it did on October 7, God is not to blame for anything and everything. There is human evil.

God built a world in which we all have free choice for good or for evil. All of our actions have consequences. But He made us able to choose what to make of all of this. Maybe all of the things that are happening are because we have broken His will for us. His principles aren't broken. What we've done to the principles is broken.

We have been building houses on the beach. We're like the man who says, "Yeah, I understand the concept of a strong foundation, but I'm going to build it here on the beach." That was our choice, and now we’re just reaping the consequences. But perhaps, as we all share this pain and this path, we can be somebody else's opportunity. If we choose our tragedy, our lives can happen for us and others and no longer just to us.