SALT LAKE CITY — We all inherit certain genes from our family tree, some good and some bad. While certain things can be resolved with a nip-and-tuck, others are not so easy to fix.

At the age of 12 it was discovered that I had inherited a gene from my father’s side of the family. My brain wasn’t producing enough of a chemical called seratonin, which was causing me to be severely depressed. Along with depression, it is common to suffer from anxiety attacks — and sure enough, I had that, too.

More specifically, I suffered from school anxiety. I had a 3.9 GPA and made the honor roll. I was a good student, but every morning I woke up in terror. I would sweat, vomit, turn pale, shake and fight my parents to not have to go. Eventually it became too much and I dropped out of school.

By the age of 15 my parents divorced, and by the age of 17, my mother moved away and never told me where she went or that she was even leaving. Her last words to me were, “I don’t want to have anything to do with you anymore.”

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Before we all go and grab a tissue and start to feel sorry for this poor author, I think it’s important for you to know how my life has turned out and allow me to share with you some of the lessons I have learned from my childhood. I’m now 27 years old and I work full time in the health care industry. The two greatest joys in my life are my wife of three years and our little boy, who just turned 1 year old. My wife and I met while she was still in medical school, and I’m still trying to figure out why she chose me. She keeps me humble because she is certainly smarter than I am. Our son is full of energy, and I dread the day he starts walking. His playfulness keeps me young, but his energy makes me old.

You wouldn’t think my life would have turned out so well after all of my challenges, but I think it’s due to keeping my faith and working hard to gain the upper hand in my trials. From all of the lessons I have learned along the way, I believe that the following two are the most important.

First, we all have our challenges, and there is always someone who has it worse than you. I’m currently visiting my wife’s side of the family in South America where everywhere I look there is poverty. Just today I saw a man bathing with a bucket, children walking in the street with no shoes and people living in what looks more like a tree house than a home. All of these things make me grateful for what I have. Sometimes it isn’t so obvious that others have it worse than you, because we want to make people think that our life is great. But the truth is that everyone has problems, and most of us wouldn’t want to trade our problems with each other.

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Second, it’s not the challenge that’s important but what we do with it that matters. Our challenges can transform us into better and stronger people if we will let them. One night during my parents' divorce I was lying in bed looking up at the ceiling, wondering what I was going to do now. It occurred to me that I had spent the last few years being depressed when I really shouldn’t have been, and I had wasted all of that time being sad. Now that my parents were divorcing I had a legitimate reason to be sad, but I decided that’s not what I wanted. Every trained professional I had seen had given up on me and my family doctor said that my parents' divorce would “destroy” me, so I did what they couldn’t do. I took it upon myself to fix the problem.

I took night classes and obtained my GED. I got a full-time job to save money for a full-time mission for the LDS Church. At 17, when my mom left, I spent the next three days in my room crying — but by this time my resolve was such that I determined that if I had come this far, nothing was going to stop me. I continued to work and save, and I also read uplifting books, listened to soothing music and got myself to the point where I was able to stop taking my medication.

I served faithfully as a full-time missionary, but I went with a different attitude than most. I didn’t go to baptize, I went to help those in need. If they didn’t want to join my faith or already were members of my faith, it didn’t matter. I wanted to use my experiences to help others. For two years I saw the hardships of my past bless the lives of those I came in contact with. There were some who joined my faith and others who never did, but I came to the conclusion that if we can rise to face our challenges and overcome them, it then becomes our responsibility to use our experiences to help others.

The stresses of my young life were more than any 12-year-old should have to go through. I may have missed out on fully enjoying my teen years, but the lessons I learned and the maturity I obtained at an early age have carried over into my adult years and have made me a better father, husband and individual. Life is full of challenges and sometimes they seem like more than we can handle, but it’s important that we do handle them because your challenge today could be someone else’s blessing tomorrow.

Marcus Bagley loves life and wants you to also. He is a first-time writer but has long been a student of life's lessons.

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