Do you ever sit and wonder if you had made this choice different or that choice different what your life would have been like today? I think I have done this quite a lot since my 40's came around. Probabaly because of different trials I have had in the last several years. Wondering if I had done this or that differently would I be having these trials?
Then this past weekend I attended a women's conference and performance where I heard the gospel taught by word and song. It was a performance by a group called Mercy River. It was during this performance that was so uplifting that I heard something said that hit me so hard. I guess when you are ready to hear something that you really need to hear is when you really get it as if it was the first time you heard it. One of the girls said she had heard a speaker once say that it was important to teach young women that when we get married to the right person in the right place by the right authority, it is not gonna be all "Happily Ever After. We will continue to have trials in our lives". He then said, "The gospel of Jesus Christ is not insurance against pain, it is resource in the event of pain". Wow! So, this quote really got me thinking a lot!
In fact I started thinking to myself..."Duh. What did you think? That because you started off your married life on the right foot, that you were not gonna have any more trials in your life"? I then realized how silly I sounded. In fact I then realized that trials are trials because they are difficult for us. My particular trials may not seem difficult or hard to another person, that's what makes them "my trials"....because they are difficult for me. And we all know that none of us will escape this life without them. That is the reason we are here.
Now, we may have traded a certain set of trials for another depending on the particular choices we made and continue to make in this life but, they will still seem hard and difficult, because they are meant to be, how else will we learn to depend and lean on our Savior? Our need for his atonement and our dependance on him is what we are here to learn. So, now my "Happily Ever After" makes perfect sense!
Then this past weekend I attended a women's conference and performance where I heard the gospel taught by word and song. It was a performance by a group called Mercy River. It was during this performance that was so uplifting that I heard something said that hit me so hard. I guess when you are ready to hear something that you really need to hear is when you really get it as if it was the first time you heard it. One of the girls said she had heard a speaker once say that it was important to teach young women that when we get married to the right person in the right place by the right authority, it is not gonna be all "Happily Ever After. We will continue to have trials in our lives". He then said, "The gospel of Jesus Christ is not insurance against pain, it is resource in the event of pain". Wow! So, this quote really got me thinking a lot!
In fact I started thinking to myself..."Duh. What did you think? That because you started off your married life on the right foot, that you were not gonna have any more trials in your life"? I then realized how silly I sounded. In fact I then realized that trials are trials because they are difficult for us. My particular trials may not seem difficult or hard to another person, that's what makes them "my trials"....because they are difficult for me. And we all know that none of us will escape this life without them. That is the reason we are here.
Now, we may have traded a certain set of trials for another depending on the particular choices we made and continue to make in this life but, they will still seem hard and difficult, because they are meant to be, how else will we learn to depend and lean on our Savior? Our need for his atonement and our dependance on him is what we are here to learn. So, now my "Happily Ever After" makes perfect sense!
I think about that a lot too..what if I would have taken a different direction, what would have been my future..but like you, Happily ever after, isn't always going to be Happy, sometimes it feels like enduring until the ever after..But I wouldn't change it for anything in the world..Trails come to us all, I too wouldn't want anyone else's, because sometimes I can barely handle my own..Hugs my friend!
ReplyDeletesomethings take me 40 something years to get....I'm slow like that.....oh ya, and stubborn, very stubborn:)
ReplyDeleteThanks Lisa, I need reminders like this all the time. It helps me to keep on keeping on.
ReplyDelete