I'm so excited for the new year and the possibilities it will bring. Keeping my fingers crossed for more opportunities to publish my books, and keeping my hopes up that I will finally meet my eternal companion.
I've had a few opportunities to ponder life, my life specifically, and I'm hoping the new year will bring a renewed sense of my purpose here on earth. I'm trying to reconnect with all the inner whisperings of the spirit and draw myself closer to my Heavenly Father, all while writing, reading, editing, and flying.
Can we overcome the internal challenges as well as the external ones? I sure hope so. Yesterday I had a few moments to ponder the trials I've been given in this life and when one ponders their trials we also start to ponder the reasons or lessons we are to learn from them. I can list several different lessons I'm supposed to learn right now but none of them really seem to fit.
Patience is a good thing, but let's be honest, I am not really a patient person. I can wait, but it doesn't matter how long I wait, I will still be waiting impatiently and I really can wait for a long time. Perhaps the lesson is not patience.
Trust in Heavenly Father. This is a great lesson, one that I'm ever getting closer and closer to understanding. Trusting his timing, well that falls in with patience and we all know how that lesson is going. But even this didn't quite fit. Yes, these are things I'm learning and they are good things to learn, but they aren't the reason for my lesson.
That's when it hit me, maybe I'm not learning the right lesson. Maybe my trials are the lesson. It's the growth, the understanding, the who I am becoming vs. who I want to become. Perhaps that is the lesson.
What kind of a person do I want to be in 2016. I know that the angry, annoyed, bitter person I was starting to feel like at the end of 2015 isn't who I want to become. So what changes do I need to make to become the person I really want to be. I want to be happy and that happiness comes through service no matter how big or small it is.
My job gives me ample opportunities to serve other people. I try to do it with a smile, but sometimes that smile is forced. And then there is service at home and at church. Sure things don't always go my way, but then again not a lot has gone as planned since high school.
After thinking about all of these things and still wondering if I struck the right lesson I had a different thought come to me. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in high school, yeah things were tough, but really I had it easy. I had great friends who had good standards and values. My talents and experiences, though not exactly what I'd hoped for, were still amazing and awesome. Even in college things were pretty smooth. The few hitches I encountered were easily overcome (though at the time it didn't seem so easy). Looking back my life was easy.
So why does it feel so hard now? Why do I struggle with the trials I have now? That's when the thought occurred to me. I needed a chance to grow and yep, become a better person. If I had encountered the trials and hardships back then that I feel now, I probably wouldn't have been as strong a person in the gospel or in just life in general. I would have floundered and drowned in my sorrows.
Being older and facing the trials I face is probably the best thing Heavenly Father could have done for me. Is it hard now? Yes. Can I handle it now? Yes. Would I have been able to handle this back then? No, probably not without severe loss of faith.
That being said (and I said a lot) I'm grateful for the trials and challenges I've had and I hope that by looking back and seeing the course I could take and looking ahead at the course I want to take, I can strive to be a better person. Will I succeed? Yes, every day a little at a time. I might not be the happy person I want to be every moment of the day, but with the strength of the Lord I can get there.
Does this mean my trials will go away? I sincerely doubt it. In fact I don't doubt that things will get even harder, but each experience helps me grow, so I know that the harder trials I will face in the future I will be able to handle.
Thanks for listening to my ramblings. Happy New Year!!!
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