Dangerous Prayer

Someone told me of a very dangerous prayer.  "God, do not let me out of this situation until I learn what you would have me learn."  I never prayed that prayer before now.  I prayed the usual foxhole prayer of survival in a powerless situation.  "God get me out of this and then I will do thus and so."  I never seemed to get around to the better "thus and so."  This dangerous prayer takes courage, faith and hope.  The belief is that the present misery has a lot to teach me.  If I feel abandoned, lonely, rejected, failure, ignored, discontented, and restless, for instance, stay with it and maybe I will learn something.  Drugs, alcohol, food, getting busy to escape, are not teachers.  The pain is the teacher.  I have found it so.  My best teachers have helped me to identity the pain.  And meditation is not about getting mellow, but about getting well.