Is faith by default still faith?

So I'm not thinking of changing religions (I couldn't anyway since I don't have religion but rather a relationship with the One True Living God), nor abandoning my faith. But there have been some days when my faith has been in place because the absence of it was an intolerable concept. I simply could not fathom how to survive without it, so I chose my faith that day.  Is faith a choice, a verb? Is it a feeling? Is it both? Neither? 

What I know for sure is that I've endured far more physical suffering than I expected from life, and more emotional distress as well. I had a very naive idea of how much suffering each person should be allotted in life.  But I don't see, now, why I should be exempt from the worst life has to offer when millions of people live on the edge of it or smack dab in the middle of it. I don't like it. I don't exactly know how to feel secure or at peace when more calamity could strike tomorrow. 

We've been told we should play the lottery because the chances of my husband having all the things happen to his brain that have happened are astronomical.  

Do some people who seem to have a charmed life just make better choices and somehow avoid suffering, or do they keep it to themselves, or do they have a better attitude about it than I do? I don't believe in silent suffering, however, I think there is such a thing as quiet suffering that brings one to a new level of knowing God if we let it, if we are willing to maybe talk more to Him about it than others (yes, I'm thinking about it for myself, but I have to think out loud first). I don't think my life should be defined by hardship endured or suffering suffered, but rather my relationship with my heavenly Father and what HE has done in my life rather than what *I* have endured or accomplished. 

But pain naturally makes a person turn inward. It's easy to become very self-focused. Pain screams for attention. It is a consuming beast.  The challenge in living with it is to continually refuse that inward focus and turn back to that outside ourselves. It's not easy, nor does it feel very good to do at first, because when we focus on our suffering it almost feels like justice, like I have the right to think about it, wonder about it, and generally be busy with it rather than being Christ-centered and about the work of building God's Kingdom.

Hmmm......I'm still thinking.