I must say that I tried very hard throughout the week to be mindful of my children and making sure they did not feel too neglected. I realized that a lot of that time we get so busy helping everyone outside of our home with so many things that we forget the people we should care and serve the most. I think that I was blessed because of that mind set and my kids did really well with all the stress that was everywhere.
What I really wanted to share today was a thought provoking quote I heard at a Relief Society meeting I went to yesterday morning. There was a couple speaking to us about trials and faith. Both were young and both had lost their mothers to medical conditions and both had struggles and blessings come into their lives.
The wife talked about how she kept hoping that she would get to be one of those people who could say, "My mother was very sick with cancer, BUT she was miraculously healed." That wasn't the case. As she studied and prayed to be comforted, she came across a talk entitled "Faith and Infertility" she shared a quote from the talked and here it is,
"She recalls a Sunday School lesson in which a bishopric member shared an important message about faith—one she’s clung to ever since. He said, “When someone has an ailment or an illness and they are healed as the result of a blessing, their faith is being strengthened. But for those who aren’t healed but continue faithful, their faith is being perfected. The first is a faith-promoting experience. The second is faith-perfecting.”
I have thought a lot about this the last 2 days. And how true it is. If every time we prayed for a sick friend or family member to be healed and they were, if every time we weren't completely comfortable in our circumstances and they quickly changed because of a prayer, or whatever they may be, we would have a lot of faith promoting experiences, but how much greater our faith has to be as we struggle through the hard times, as we watch a loved one suffer through the final days of cancer or old age. As we watch our children make bad choices or struggle as a parent. As we struggle through school or a job or a calling. As we fight to overcome depression or a life long disease. How perfect our faith can become in prayer and in love and in endurance.
President Kimball in "The Miracle of Forgiveness" talks about struggles. He says something like, strength and struggle go together. without struggle we would never know the strength we have or have opportunities to be strengthened. So very true. Think about how much stronger we come out of a rough time. Strength we would never know we had not been faced with specific trials, big and small, throughout our lives.
I watch my mom struggle with her problems and for the most part, she has faith, she endures as well as she can. One day, she will be better, maybe not in this life, but she will be better and I am sure she will have stories to share of faith perfecting experiences she had through the hard years of her life.
And so it is with each of us, as we struggle through our own individual struggles, we can be grateful for the opportunity our Heavenly Father is giving us to perfect our faith in Him and rely more on Him and His tender mercies.
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