I need to just accept the fact I do my best thinking at 1 am when I'm trying to fall asleep!
I started working on this post earlier and it just didn't feel right. I wasn't sure how to word it or how to approach it. Finally it came to me.
Sometime it can be so hard when you are doing everything right and yet everything is going wrong! At times you wonder, I've been living my life perfect so why am I not receiving any blessings? It is frustrating when life isn't going according to your plan. When you pray for something and it doesn't happen you feel like God isn't answering your prayers. Often we are asking for things that aren't meant to be. It's hard to see that God has a different plan in store for you.
As you are going through these trials or things are going wrong it feels dark at times. It can be lonely and discouraging. At times you wonder if this trial will even end. It usually is a slow process so it is harder to see, but over time things start to change.
Someday you'll get to a point where you will look back on your life, look back at these trials and be grateful for them. They brought you to where you are today. It's hard to imagine when you are in the midst of these trials, but they are leading you to where you are meant to be whether that is physically, emotionally or spiritually. You will see how those trials shaped your life. Without them your life would have gone in a different direction. Who knows where you would have ended up. You will also be able to see the little blessing that happened along the way. It's the little things that happened during those trials that you realize just how grateful you are for them. Without that trial you might not of met a person in your life, or went somewhere, you wouldn't have felt love or supported by others, wouldn't have found your true passion or potential, or had your testimony strengthened. It becomes hard to imagine life without those trials.
We are never done or exempt from having trials or bumps in the road. As a teenager I thought I had been through enough trials in the first 18 years of my life, there was no way I was going to have to endure another major one! My #1 dream in life was to be a mom, thus my biggest fear was that I wouldn't be able to get pregnant.
While scrolling through Facebook the other day someone's status got me thinking. She talked about how the only thing she ever wanted was to be a mother and how she now has x amount of kids. Growing up all I ever wanted in life was to be a mom. You never dream about adopting, you imagine being pregnant and seeing your baby for the first time. As my wedding day got closer and closer I worried about not being able to get pregnant. It was my greatest fear. I thought for sure after everything I had been through, there was no way Heavenly Father would do that to me. One night a had a dream and in it I was pregnant. I felt reassured that was my sign it would be okay. Now here I am at 31, I've been married for 11 years and I have never had a successful pregnancy, nor will I ever.
About a year before Em came along I remember during a Relief Society lesson the teacher saying, If you pray hard enough for something and have enough faith it will always happen! I couldn't help but sit there and wonder, have I not prayed for this enough? Do I not have enough faith? I did pray enough, and have faith enough, but it was not in Heavenly Father's plans for me to ever bare children. I don't know why, maybe if I had gotten pregnant something could have gone devastatingly wrong, or maybe it is because I was meant to have our two children that could only come to our family through adoption. Why did I have a dream, that seemed so real, that I was pregnant? I feel it was simply a sign that I would be a mother no matter what.
I do have my 2 amazing children though. I wouldn't say I am grateful that I have never been able to have a biological child, but I am grateful for the experiences I've had adopting my children! On our way home after being sealed to Brax my husband said, "We are so lucky! Most people only get to be sealed once, we got to be sealed together as a family 3 times!"
It can be so hard when we are doing the best we can, doing everything right and others talk about how when you do these things you will be blessed. We often assume those blessings will be blessings we want, not ones that we need.
I love this talk by Elder James E. Faust, Refined in Our Trials.
*"This message is to all, but especially to those who feel they have had more trials, sorrows, pricks, and thorns than they can bear and in their adversity are almost drowned in the waters of bitterness. It is intended as one of hope, strength, and deliverance."
*"In the pain, the agony, and the heroic endeavors of life, we pass through a refiner’s fire, and the insignificant and the unimportant in our lives can melt away like dross and make our faith bright, intact, and strong."
*"Into every life there come the painful, despairing days of adversity and buffeting. There seems to be a full measure of anguish, sorrow, and often heartbreak for everyone, including those who earnestly seek to do right and be faithful."
*"The thorns that prick, that stick in the flesh, that hurt, often change lives which seem robbed of significance and hope. This change comes about through a refining process which often seems cruel and hard. In this way the soul can become like soft clay in the hands of the Master in building lives of faith, usefulness, beauty, and strength. For some, the refiner’s fire causes a loss of belief and faith in God, but those with eternal perspective understand that such refining is part of the perfection process."
*"The blessings of eternity will surely come to those who endure refining, as the Lord Himself taught: “He only is saved who endureth unto the end.”
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