life is hard

Life is hard. Many who know me know that I frequently quote the phrase, “life sucks and then you die.” As uplifting as that isn’t, there is some truth behind. Life is hard. Life is really hard. Life is super ultra-mega hard. But it doesn’t mean that it has to be super ultra-mega depressing or infinite. God gave us life so that we could learn to become better people and as we read in the scriptures we find that the best way for us to do that is to experience trials and tribulations. In Romans 5:3-5 Paul states that “…we glory in tribulations also; knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope” I don’t know about ya’ll but when I’m going through tribulations, I’m hardly every glorifying in the opportunity that I have to endure something difficult in order to learn and grow. But maybe I should. We all go through rough times so maybe we all should. Because of tribulations, we have the opportunity to learn patience. And when we are patient through our trials, we gain experience from what we have just endured. We can learn and grow from the times that are exceptionally hard in our lives. And because we have gained experience, we can only have hope and confidence for the future and things to come. And even though life is hard, we will have hope that when we have more hard times, we will be patient through them so in the end, all we ever gain is more hope and happiness. I use the word “can” in explaining all of the outcomes of tribulation because there is also another option when enduring tribulations. When enduring a trial, instead of learning patience we can turn away from God and become impatient, only waiting for the miserable experience to end so that we can learn to have fun again and move on just the same as before. Only God doesn’t want us to stay stagnant, He wants us to become more than we are. But if we are only looking towards the finish instead of being patient in the journey, we can become very ignorant by refusing to learn anything or gain any experience from what we have endured. And because of this all we can see in the future is fear and despair. We have fear that something hard and impossible is going to come at us again but we will think there is no way out. God gave us a “way out”. The way out is the Savior, Jesus Christ. He endured all and He is the one we need to go to in order to receive patience for our trials and to come out a better person. Life is hard. Life is ridiculously hard. And yet, we can always learn and grow from the hard experiences that are placed in our lives. But it is our choice as to how we are going to handle the experiences that are given to us and if we are going to turn to Christ for help. To quote a good friend: “So do all who live to see such [hard] times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”-Gandalf the Grey 

hakuna matata

Just like how we have a loving father on this earth, we also have a Father in Heaven who loves us very dearly. He is fully aware of our thoughts, feelings, and desires, which is why He gave us scriptures to lead us and direct us in our lives. Any questions, thoughts, or concerns can be answered in the scriptures that He has given us from His mouth through his prophets, latter-day and ancient. I know that the prophets in the Bible are divinely called of God to receive His word and record it for us in this time now. A saying that would really sum up this concept would be that “we talk to God through prayer, and He talks to us through the scriptures.” In my religion class, my Professor told us to come to class with a question or concern that had been troubling us; something that when we allow our mind to wonder, it always seems to end up on that idea. And from there, with that concern in mind, we were to focus into the lesson and the scriptures for help us with our struggles. There was a room full of students and plenty of desires for answers from the Lord but I know that He answered each one of them through the scriptures, because he gave me comfort for mine. In 1 Corinthians 6:11 it reads “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” with the “some of you” referring to those who had sinned. Paul is explaining to the people of Corinth that they need to leave all of their sins behind them and move on. If they have repented, the Lord has forgiven them and they are clean of those sins and they need to continue forward with faith and not dwell on those past sins. I read somewhere that regret is hardest emotion to death with, it eats up your life with the questions of “what if,"“why didn’t I," “I should have,” etc. Heavenly Father loves us and he does not want us to ever feel that regret of things past done. I have been struggling with the emotion of regret and questioning how to move on when sometimes it's hard to forgive and repent. Forgiveness and repentance can be very hard at times, but we need to leave things OF the past IN the past. We can’t dwell on our mistakes and feel regret for everything. It would take over our lives and destroy it. The Lord wants us to trust in Him and use Christ’s saving Atonement to no longer remember the pains of our past sins. God knows each and everyone of us, he speaks to us through the scriptures and he loves us. He loves us enough to “remember our sins no more.” We just have to remember to move on past our sins as well, which can sometimes be harder. When we don’t know what to do, when life gets harder than we can imagine or bear, we need to not only turn to God in prayer but to the scriptures as well. He has already given us guidance and comfort for our needs in there. We just have to trust our loving Heavenly Father and have faith in Him and He will always open our minds and hearts to the things that we need.