In the last few months I've been thinking about how ironic it is that I've been having some of the sweetest times of my life interspersed with some of the hardest moments. Unemployment and pregnancy being among the hard things for me, with the relationships with my family, especially my husband and children being among the sweet things of life for me. Motherhood itself brings with it its own challenges, don't get me wrong. But there have also been many smiles along the way.
As we are completing our 4th month of unemployment I have come to the conclusion that life is going to be full of challenges, and even once we overcome this one new ones will arise. I do believe that we don't have to endure the same intensity of challenges every single year, we probably couldn't handle that, but there will always be challenges.
So the task is to find those sweet moments in between all of the challenges we face. Because if we're always waiting for the challenges to be over in order to be happy we will never be happy. The challenges will never be over in this life.
Something I read by Julie B. Beck in a recent "LDS Living" Magazine really struck me. She writes:
"I've learned that the world teaches us that we can have the dream now. They express the dream as what Adam and Eve had in the garden-you don't have to work for anything and everything is peaceful and happy. That's really where the adversary still is. But we chose to have a mortal experience to prepare for the real dream, and that dream is eternal life. Eve was willing to go through a long, hard mortal experience in order to work toward the promise of the dream-I don't think most women realize that. They're trying to make it be the dream now. We don't get that here. What we get here is the experience." (LDS Living, March/April 2012, pg. 55)
If we expect to live the perfect dream, the perfect life while we're here on this earth, we will never be satisfied. But if we understand that this life means challenges and joys scattered together and if we can learn to endure the hard times and be grateful for the good times, we will live the life we came to earth for and we can have joy here and now, while looking forward to the eternal joys to come.
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About Me
- Greek Goddess
- I'm a woman who is trying to do her best each day of her life. I laugh, cry, make mistakes, create, make messes and clean. I love life and learning and staying in touch with family and friends. Every year I get to know myself better and how best to use my own strengths and weaknesses to navigate my path.
1 comment:
Totally agree and can very much associate with your feelings of worst of times AND best of times. It's amazing the intensely beautiful moments of joy available to us even in the hardest of days if we are looking for them and appreciating them. Despite hard days I am so happy that you are finding joy in life and ever-deepening love with your family.
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