Here in my small town in Arkansas, we’ve just experienced record-breaking weather. And by “experienced”, I mean Southern Girl-tortured by the deepest snowfall in a century and bitterly cold temperatures.

We are fortunate, unlike our Texas friends and family, many who experienced everything from busted water lines to days without electricity. Most of them likely won’t have the time or ability to even read this blog when it’s published.

We have been in similar circumstances, having had back-to-back ice storms that left us without power for 15 days. My now-adult daughter will tell you that we ended up teaching her how to play poker with pony beads by the light of kerosene lamps. The moment-to-moment judgments you must make to survive such historic events shifts you into a different mindset, including what to do when the ice or snow thaws and you must deal with any damage.

That shift to constant resourceful thoughts and second-guessing is flat out exhausting. By necessity, your focus must hone down to what you do to get by, whether it’s day to day, or hour to hour, sometimes second to second. Sometimes, you know what needs to be done; sometimes, it’s a guessing game. You might find a new way to do things, or fail miserably.

But like tempering steel, these experiences change us just a bit. It makes us a bit stronger, a bit smarter about how to handle the next challenge. And even though, at times, it seems like we can’t take even a feather’s weight more of a burden, we somehow endure. We do better — because we know better.

Personally, as I alluded to last week, I dealt with my mother in a hospital 25 miles away and a pending snowstorm. We didn’t really expect it to be historic in nature, but there was a total of 16” of white stuff in our backyard when it was done. My area can skip entire years without any snow at all. I consider it a miracle that we’re slowly coming out of this relatively unscathed. And that includes my mother’s icy/snowy trip by ambulance back to the nursing home, where she is now receiving hospice care. We are all where we need to be, and sometimes, it’s the simplest of things that matter when times are challenging.

I have, at times, regretted failing at weight loss so many times in my life, amplifying my obesity with every attempt until now. How much better would my life had been, had I done this thirty years ago? Forty? Or, heaven forbid, never allowed my weight to get out of hand in the first place?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve given myself a mental beating, especially in the dungeon of depression, when I least needed it — though my weight (and then-undetected health issues) were quite likely the cause of my depression in the first place. But the truth of it is, I needed tempering. I needed to be stronger and grow stronger. I needed to learn, to investigate, to question, and to accept my own culpability.

Without those things, arriving at yet another new low this week would not be possible. I had to work my way through all of those things to arrive where I am. Now that I know better, I do better. Just as the weather-related experiences taught both my husband and I how to prepare for the possibility of things that thankfully did not happen, we would not have been caught unaware if they had.

Life’s tough experiences are meant not only to temper us but to help us appreciate when we receive unexpected gifts. Electricity (and internet!) in a historic snowstorm. A hot shower, for many. Someone to check on you and ask how you’re doing. We’re all part of a net; sometimes we’re the ones who need to be held up, and sometimes we’re the strength needed.