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