Coming to Grips

I've heard that phrase many times in my life, almost always in regards to a negative thing though, like you coming to grips with your dog died. Anything that has a negative conatation seems to fit with coming to grips, about anything. Maybe I'm wrong, mabye you can come to grips over something good as well, I have never really thought about it to much. Other than right now of course. I am or should say have come to grips over the golf pro work, making the choice was a coming to grips thing for me, it turned out to be a positive thing in the end, but at the time it wasn't and I guess that's what I mean, it seems always to be a negative thing. Like coming to grips that I'd never, ever, play in the nba, that was a big coming to grips thing in my life, it came earlly but after a while and looking back, it was, for me a good thing. Coming to grips with it, not that I didn't make the nba ,-) I guess one could look at coming to grips with something as a possible learning experience and just take it from there? Maybe life is just one big coming to grips lesson, maybe everything you experience is just that, a coming to grips with the exact situation that one is experiencing that enables one to look back at hard times and live on.