"Endure it well"

Life has been tough lately. Like really really tough. I don't really want to get into the details, except that it's been hard for several weeks now, and sometimes I wonder: "When is it ever going to get better? Haven't I suffered enough? Haven't I learned what I was supposed to?"

The answer that came to me this morning was this: I don't know when. But I know it will get better. It's not going to be like this forever.

I really do believe that God could take this pain away if he wanted. He's done it before in other experiences. I believe in miracles.

But he hasn't. Leaving me wondering, as Joseph Smith in his prison cell, "How long...?" (D&C 121:2)

This talk has given me the best answer: "if certain mortal experiences were cut short, it would be like pulling up a flower to see how the roots are doing. Put another way, too many anxious openings of the oven door, and the cake falls instead of rising."

We may want certain trials to end long before God has planned for them to end. If they did end earlier, we might miss out on the chance to develop so many different virtues that can only be developed through long, slow, painful endurance.

"Patient endurance permits us to cling to our faith in the Lord and our faith in His timing when we are being tossed about by the surf of circumstance. Even when a seeming undertow grasps us, somehow, in the tumbling, we are being carried forward, though battered and bruised."

I really do believe this will all allow me to be a more faithful, humble, patient and compassionate person one day, the wonderful person that God has intended me to become. So I continue to trust in God. I trust in His timing, and I trust that this will get better.

and I keep reading this talk because it inspires me. :)

Choose ye this day...

I taught Relief Society today. My final testimony, the most powerful thing I believe I said was this: Sometimes in life, things don't go the way you want them to. This can be disappointing or heartbreaking. When you can't choose to change your circumstance, you have two options: you can either choose to believe (believe it will get better, believe God has a plan) or choose not to.

JUST BELIEVE!! It may not take away your trial, but it will make it easier to get through.