Life's Storms

"Into every life some rain must fall." Longfellow

Poets and mystics have known it.  Every life has challenges, times of loss, sorrow.  Does it serve a purpose?  I think it must.  What if the purpose of life's challenges is to prepare our souls to become more fully who we were intended to be?  It doesn't seem like we are likely to have personal growth during times of complacency.  It seems to take a challenge to rock us off our center, so that we can become even more fully human than we were.