It's been almost a year since I recorded my thoughts on this blog. A lot has happened in that year but instead of going over all that I wanted to write down about something pretty good that happened to me over this last week. A little background fact is needed though. The number of active members on my side of the family is dwindling and getting smaller. I don't know all the specifics or reasons of why someone decides to distance themselves from the gospel but my hope is that my family members will find their way back. Anyway, I have a brother who's birthday was this last weekend and we as his siblings all wanted to do something really special to celebrate him. His birthday was Saturday and we threw a surprise party for him on Sunday (yesterday). Leading up to this day I was struggling with wanting to keep the day holy but I also did not want to come across as self righteous. I had an internal battle going on throughout the week because I knew that my siblings were wanting to order food or have it delivered during the party. I didn't feel good about chipping in money and yet I knew that my husband and I would both be hungry since we would be coming straight from church and this was going to be where we would have our dinner. A solution I came up with that I thought would be a good idea would be to suggest pizza from Papa Murphy's. I could pick it up the day before and we could still enjoy it without feeling like we broke the Sabbath. The problem was that it would be just under $40.00 and we didn't have it at the moment and my siblings weren't getting back to me about pitching in. They weren't sure if they wanted pizza and were thinking of ordering food from a different restaurant. During the same week we went to Grandma Colleen's house for a visit and as we were leaving she pulled into her purse and gave me two twenty dollar bills. Just to be nice. She's incredibly generous and didn't know that I was needing $40.00 for this surprise party. I told my siblings that they didn't need to pitch in if we went with pizza and with that everyone was on board. I know this story doesn't seem a big deal to many but to me it was. I'm glad that I was still able to enjoy the time with my family without compromising my own beliefs.
Monday, March 13, 2017
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Gratitude
Well I’m so pleased to say that patience and hope have
gotten me through a trial that lasted about seven months and now it’s over! I’m
immensely grateful for current blessings in my life right now. We just found
out we are expecting another baby which is what I have been focusing my prayers
on for quite a while now. It’s easy to feel grateful right now in my life but
what I realize is that gratitude is something we must have during all times of
our lives. Even the hard times. It’s hard to feel grateful when you feel like
your prayers aren’t being answered or that your righteous desire is being
overlooked. I got to a point where it was easier to feel picked on and hurt
instead of looking to understand God’s plan for me. I want to feel grateful for
all things and not just when a specific blessing comes my way.
I decided to look up talks that would help me understand how
I can be better about feeling gratitude during times where it may be hard to
feel grateful and I found a wonderful quote by Elder Uchtdorf. He said, “Sooner
or later, I believe that all of us experience times when the very fabric of our
world tears at the seams, leaving us feeling alone, frustrated, and adrift. It can
happen to anyone. No one is immune. We can be grateful. Everyone’s situation is
different, and the details of each life are unique. Nevertheless, I have
learned that there is something that would take away the bitterness that may
come into our lives. There is one thing we can do to make life sweeter, more joyful,
even glorious. We can be grateful!”. He goes on to add, “It might sound
contrary to the wisdom of the world to suggest that one who is burdened with
sorrow should give thanks to God. But those who set aside the bottle of
bitterness and lift instead the goblet of gratitude can find a purifying drink
of healing, peace, and understanding.”
I want and need to remember that gratitude is not something
I should just feel when something happens that benefits me. Elder Uchtdorf
mentioned something that I found insightful when he said that we can make a
personal choice on whether or not we are going to limit our gratitude based on
the blessings we feel we lack. Or we can choose to have an unfaltering grateful
heart. The choice is ours. We have the power to choose to be grateful in any circumstance
we might find ourselves in. Being grateful might not change the circumstance
but it will change your heart. Not only will it change your heart but it can
also heal you and bring you peace even in the middle of trials. Gratitude if
allowed can be more powerful than disappointment, discouragement and despair. I
made the mistake of waiting to express gratitude until after my prayers were
answered. I could have chosen to express gratitude a month ago, two months ago
and even seven months ago when I got my first negative pregnancy test. I
allowed myself to go through a dark time where I could have been using
gratitude to help me feel the peace that I desperately needed a few months ago.
Being grateful during hard times does not mean that you are happy with the
situation you’re in, but it does mean that you have faith in God and his plan
for you.
Those who are grateful are happier people. I’m grateful that
a few months ago I felt the need to strengthen my relationship with my Heavenly
Father. I’m grateful for the topics I’ve studied (adversity, patience, hope)
because this helped me feel peace in my circumstance and I did feel closer to
my father in heaven. I’m grateful for future topics I will study. I’m grateful
for my husband, my daughter and now soon to be new family member. Life is good.
And in the future if I ever lose sight and think that life is not as good as I
would like, I’ll have to remember that gratitude can be felt in any circumstance
and at any time.
Friday, March 11, 2016
Hope
In my recent ongoing personal trial, I have been praying and
hoping for something that has yet to
happen for us. Because of this I was losing patience, hence the reason for my
first two topics. Through learning that trials are needed and that patience has
to do with God’s timetables over ours I have come to believe that it is still okay to hope. It’s also okay to
feel a little sad if what we hope for doesn’t happen yet. We just need to be
careful about this emotion turning into bitterness and leading us away from Christ and our Heavenly Father.
On the church’s website it points out that the meaning of
hope is often misunderstood in our world today. We often think of hope as
wanting something but not being sure that the thing will happen or come true.
In the gospel the word hope is seen as unwavering and sure. The exact
definition of hope on LDS.org is ‘the confident expectation of and longing for
the promised blessings of righteousness’. The word confident sticks out to me.
I usually use the worldly definition of hope in my day to day life. My hope is
usually followed with a hint of doubt. It turns out that I didn’t understand
this word myself.
When we have hope, we TRUST God’s promises. Real hope is
more than just wishful thinking. Hope is having the assurance that if we do “the
works of righteousness,” we “shall receive our reward, even peace in this
world, and eternal life in the world to come” (D&C 59:23). In chapter 7 of
the book of Moroni we are taught that we can have hope because of the Atonement
of Jesus Christ: “What is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that
ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his
resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in
him according to the promise” (Moroni 7:41).
Something new that I learned about hope is that it can be strengthened.
Hope can be strengthened through keeping the commandments, studying scriptures,
praying, and repenting of our sins. In Alma 22:16 we read “if thou wilt repent
of all thy sins, and will bow down before God, and call on His name in faith,
believing that ye shall receive, then shalt thou receive the hope which thou
desirest”.
In a 1998 general conference talk Elder Neal A. Maxwell
described hope as a realistic anticipation which takes the form of a
determination – not only to survive adversity but, moreover to endure well to
the end.
I have hope that
my trial will pass. It’s because of hope that I can continue to develop patience.
I have hope that I’ll receive the blessings that were promised to me. I can use
hope to help me get by day to day. In my opening paragraph I wrote that I
believe it is okay to still hope when things don’t go the way we would like,
but now I know that we must hope. It
is because of hope that we can see past the here and now and focus on an
eternal perspective.
I do want to mention that feeling sadness during adversity is not a weakness. It's perfectly okay to feel sorrow. I once read a blog that pointed out that the shortest verse in the scriptures is two words. "Jesus wept". Christ was not lacking in faith of his own divine power. He was not questioning his Father or falling to weakness. Christ wept because he felt sorrow.
This very week I had a moment of sadness come over me, but that moment did not take away from my hope. We cannot know joy without pain, happiness without grief. Hope is knowing that what God has planned is far much better than what we could ever anticipate; even if right now might be difficult.
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Patience
I’m glad I chose adversity as the first topic because I
realize how inevitable and important trials are in our journey here. But just
because I know they are needed this won’t always make them the easiest to
handle. I decided to focus on another one of my weaknesses, patience.
I found an old general conference talk titled ‘Patience in
Affliction’ given by Angel Abrea. He points out that it demands persistent
effort to develop patience as a personal attribute. In this talk he was not
talking about a passive patience which waits only for the passing of time to
heal or resolve things which happen to
us, but rather a patience that is active, which makes things happen. Patience in affliction and adversity means to
persist firmly and never abandon that which we know to be true, standing firm
with the hope that in the Lord’s due time we will gain an understanding of that
which we do not understand now and which causes us suffering.
“For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your
faults, ye shall take it patiently? But if, when ye do well, and suffer for it,
ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.” (1Peter 2:20)
Elder Neal A. Maxwell spoke on the topic of patience to BYU
students back in 1979. He said he chose the topic for his own personal reasons
because of his own continuing need to develop this attribute. It was great to
see that even apostles struggle with similar things that I do. He described
patience perfectly, “patience is not indifference. Actually, it is caring very
much, but being willing, nevertheless, to submit both to the Lord and to what
the scriptures call the “process of time.”
He noted that patience is tied very closely to faith in our
Heavenly Father. When we are stubbornly impatient we are suggesting that we
know what is best. We are showing that our timetable is better than His or
expressing that our ‘plan’ is better than God’s plan. Being impatient can be distracting to the
Spirit and will only make it harder to endure our adversities. Impatience is
tied to selfishness, whereas patience and faith work together.
I’m so glad I found this talk by Elder Neal A. Maxwell
because I now think of patience in a whole new light. I had always thought of
patience as the definition found in Preach My Gospel: ‘Patience is the capacity
to endure delay, trouble, opposition, or suffering without becoming angry,
frustrated, or anxious’. This is a great definition but to be honest I had
always felt a little guilty because I’ve always had a problem with feeling
frustrated or anxious while trying to be patient. Knowing that patience is tied
to faith the way that Elder Maxwell explained gives me hope and a new
perspective. As much as I would like to dispute that impatience is tied to
selfishness, I cannot, because this statement is true. It’s because of this
statement that I want to be sure to develop this attribute as best as I can.
"Indeed, when we are unduly impatient with an omniscient God’s timing, we really are suggesting that we know what is best. Strange, isn’t it—we who wear wristwatches seek to counsel Him who oversees cosmic clocks and calendars."
- Neal A. Maxwell
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Adversity
I have learned a lot about myself as I have grown the desire
to strengthen my relationship with my Father in Heaven. However, some of those
things are not very pleasant. My biggest flaw is that I seem to feel a sense of
entitlement. I recognize and dislike this part about myself. It’s been a lot of
work to overcome this, or at least try to overcome it since I still haven’t
fully done it. My problem is that sometimes I expect blessings. I act like I
deserve blessings for each commandment kept or each good deed done. Occasionally
I expect answers to prayers just because the prayer was made. I’m learning that
this is not how it works. Yes, God wants to infinitely bless us, but these
forms of blessings will not always be in the form we would wish to receive
them.
I read an article about adversity in this month’s February
issue of the Ensign and came across the following quote.
“Sometimes we wonder about the purpose for trials and
suffering. Adversity is necessary in our Heavenly Father’s plan to help us grow
spiritually and become more like the Savior. His atonement makes it possible
for us to be purified as we keep His commandments and our sacred covenants. By
exercising faith in Jesus Christ, we receive strength to rise through every
trial. I feel privileged to know I can find evidences of God’s love for me in
the good and the bad, the joy and the suffering.”
Some adversities will be easier to manage than others, while
other adversities will appear to be impossible. I’m currently going through a
personal trial that up until the last couple of weeks felt unbearable. I felt
alone, misunderstood, miserable and forgotten. I felt like giving up until I
heard a member bear her testimony of an experience where she felt alone and
devastated. She was involved in an accident where she was left paralyzed. She
made a decision during her hospital stay that she was not going to give up. She
talked about her relationship with God and how this trial strengthened their
relationship. It made me realize that I needed to humble myself. I wanted to
confidently say that my relationship with God was strong and great. It has been
in the past but my stubbornness was turning into bitter and I was only
distancing myself from Him when I should have been running towards Him. I had been
feeling forgotten because I was feeling like my prayers weren’t being answered
in the way that I wanted. After
hearing that testimony I knew that I needed to change my ways. I never stopped
praying to God but I cannot say that each of my prayers were containing the
amount of faith I needed to put into my prayers. I have since changed that. I
am working on my relationship with my Heavenly Father because when it comes
down to it this is the most important relationship I can and need to have. I
have felt better about myself and will continue to humble myself. I have a
testimony in blessings and I know that they will come in one form or another.
This knowledge is enough to get me through the hard times.
The
Apostle James taught, ‘Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall
lift you up’ (James 4:10).
I decided to search the word ‘adversity’ on the church’s
website and I loved what I read. I learned that it’s okay to feel saddened or
discouraged. In fact, these feelings are needed and part of life. Adversity is
explained as part of Heavenly Father’s plan of redemption. I read that trials,
disappointments, sadness, sickness, and heartaches are a difficult part of
life, but with the help of the Lord they can lead to spiritual growth,
refinement, and progress.
The important thing is how we act in these times of
hardships. Our happiness hugely depends on our responses during difficult
times. I have been guilty of complaining and becoming bitter when things get
tough. I have asked ‘why me?’ and ‘why now?’ or more recently ‘why not now?’
when wanting a specific answer to a prayer. But we know why. We know the road
back is not going to be easy. Considering how great the reward will be one day
it would make sense that the road wouldn’t be easy. The trials we face could
come at a time of righteous living, or caused by someone else’s actions, or
could have been avoided altogether but was created by our own doings. Sometimes
the trials could even come from a loving Heavenly Father as a teaching
experience. Whatever the reason or cause of the trial there is one thing we can
rely on. Our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. The gospel is not there to
prevent hard times from coming but to help strengthen and guide us when they do
come (Al Carraway).
The prophet Alma taught, “Whosoever shall put their trust in
God shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their
afflictions, and shall be lifted up at the last day” (Alma 36:3).
I needed these words and this topic this month. We need to
replace what we don’t know about the future or outcomes of our trials with what
we DO know about God. We have been promised in D&C 78:18 “be of good cheer,
for I will lead you along. The kingdom is yours and the blessings thereof are
yours, and the riches of eternity are yours.”.
"Because you are covenant-keeping sons and daughters of God, living in the latter part of these latter days, the Lord will ask you to do difficult things. You can count on it."
- President Nelson
Monday, February 22, 2016
Gospel Ponders
I have fasted this month and have looked for ways that I can better strengthen my relationship with my Heavenly Father. Today while doing my scripture studies I had a thought come into my head. I felt that I should study specific topics and write down my thoughts on them. Since I already have a personal blog I thought that I could create a new place where I can save my thoughts. I'm doing this for me. At the end of each topic I'll post my thoughts here.
I know that The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints is true. I have a testimony of this gospel. I have a testimony in God and the godhead. I have a testimony of the doctrine found in the scriptures. I have a testimony in modern and personal revelation. I know that our Heavenly Father loves each one of us and wants to bless us all. I am not perfect but I know that He is.
I am a wife and a mother but most importantly I am a daughter of God. If I want to be with my family forever I need to do my best in developing Christlike attributes. It's never to late to start learning all we can about Him and His plan for us. Line upon line, precept upon precept (2Nephi 28:30).
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