Trials strengthen and build beauty of character.
There is a beach I’d like to visit in California. It’s called Pebble Beach. Today I first learned of it when I read from the daily devotional which was published in 1925, Streams In The Desert.
Here’s Mrs. Charles Cowan’s description:

There is a very famous “Pebble Beach” at Pescadero, on the California coast. The long line of white surf comes up with its everlasting roar, and rattles and thunders among the stones on the shore. They are caught in the arms of the pitiless waves, and tossed and rolled, and rubbed together, and ground against the sharp-grained cliffs. Day and night forever the ceaseless attrition goes on–never any rest. And the result?
Tourists from all the world flock thither to gather the round and beautiful stones. They are laid up in cabinets; they ornament the parlor mantels. But go yonder, around the point of the cliff that breaks off the force of the sea; and up in that quiet cove, sheltered from the storms, and lying ever in the sun, you shall find abundance of pebbles that have never been chosen by the traveler.
Why are these left all the years through unsought? For the simple reason that they have escaped all the turmoil and attrition of the waves, and the quiet and peace have left them as they found them, rough and angular and devoid of beauty. Polish comes through trouble.
Everybody has trouble in life. How do you face it? Do you just barely keep going through it? Or do you take it on as adventure trusting it will make you better if you learn all you can as you go through it? I also read on the Mrs. Happy Housewife site this morning one of the most famous quotes around:
“Never give in–
never, never, never, never,
in nothing great or small,
large or petty,
never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.
Never yield to force;
never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
-Sir Winston Churchill