Christ can take our pain and make it into a blessing.

This week has been crazy–what with finishing my last finals, starting my job full-time, and technically kind of having an emotional breakdown as one chapter of my life was ending and a new one is beginning. I think that I've felt every emotion under the sun and then some this week.

Learning patience, tolerance, and other emotions like that sucks. I wish that I could just see where God wants me to be. Or what He wants me to do. Or learn. I wish I could trust Him more in different aspects of my life. It's rough, you know? I just want to be with someone who will make me happy who I can make happy, and who I can build a life with...but my life is more than just a path, more than just a journey, more than just a destination...my life is a CHANCE. A chance to be someone better. A chance at happiness. And it starts with me. Even if I already feel like I've been doing everything right, God knows when the TIMING is right.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Brother Smith talked in sacrament meeting about a few scriptures in the 2nd Epistle of Peter, and there were a few things that he talked about that I wanted to mention. He asked a question: How do we get from faith to charity? And then he answered the question. My favorite thing that he talked about was the definition of virtue. He said that virtue means to do good, and to be good, and I loved that! It gave a new meaning to the scripture "let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly". Virtue is goodness and if we let GOODNESS garnish our thoughts, life will be better.

In Relief Society, we talked about the General Conference talk by Tad R. Callister entitled "The Atonement of Jesus Christ" and I loved all of the comments and the direction that the discussion went in.

We talked about forgiveness, and how forgiveness comes from love. We talked about how God's forgiveness and forgiveness from others in our life are not entangled together. You can still be forgiven by God, even if those in our life do not forgive us. I thought that was a beautiful thought. No matter what happens, you can be forgiven by God.

We talked about how people can CHANGE and how we need to see people as they ARE and not as they WERE. I think that this is such an important reminder–not only about others, but as ourselves, too. I know that I have struggled with this at times in my life, but I am not the same person as I was. Even if it doesn't seem like I have changed much sometimes, I know deep down that I have changed a lot. I need to let myself stay changed, and we need to let others stay changed.

Our Savior is always with us–and no matter what we go through, He will be there to strengthen us. He will be there to help us deal with the pain, and the struggles, and He will be there to help us learn and grow from it. He will be there to help us find the blessings in our trials.

I have two things to share now. One is a little thought I had during the last little bit of Relief Society.

TRUST. Trust is HARD. Trusting a Being that you can't see is hard, too. 

PATIENCE. Patience is HARD. Patiently waiting for blessings to come is hard, too. 

FAITH. Faith is HARD. Having faith that everything will turn out all right is hard, too. 

Faith is the pathway to happiness. As we trust the Lord, and are patient, those things that we want will come in time. 

The other thing is this: life is easier said than done. But as we take little steps in the direction that we want, God will bless us with the confirmation that it is right, or the knowledge that it is not right. I am still learning to accept this, and to accept that right now, God wants me to choose of the things that I have been pondering, and that any one of them is going to be right. I'm absolutely TERRIFIED that I am going to make the wrong decision...but I need to trust that God will take the one I choose and use it to help me grow and change.

Xoxo
Mattie