Trials

            Anyone that has ever seen a Hallmark movie in their lifetime knows that there is always a happy ending, and that life seems to always be easy and perfect for those families. But those of us that actually live in the real world know that that is just simply not the case. Things don’t always have a happy ending, and life isn’t always as easy or as fair as we think it should be. There are things that are thrown at us at any given time, and we don’t know why. In these moments, it’s important that we have someone, or something that we can turn to for comfort. A lot of the time that support group is our family. They are some of the people you love most, and they will always have your back. But what do you do in times when it is actually your family that hurt you, or is causing you the stress? Sometimes stresses and trails we face in our families are the toughest to go through. It is crucial that we don’t allow these moments to define or break our families apart, but that we use them to strengthen our bonds, and pull us closer together.

           

            My professor in class said a quote that I absolutely loved, “crisis is not just a danger, it is an opportunity.” This rang true to me on a very personal level. It made me think of one of many different times that my family have gone through different trials, and what those did to our family. Some of them hurt us deeply, but others made us become stronger and closer than we have ever been before. Too often when we have a trial happen to us, we get mad and look around for someone to blame. We can become bitter, and completely shut ourselves out from the world. This is not the reason our Father in Heaven gives us trials. He gives them to us in order to help us grow, and become stronger. Whenever I look back at my life so far, I always am able to recognize growth that I went through because of a certain trial or struggle I went through. There is not a single person I know that looks forward to or prays for a trial in their life, but in a weird way I think we are all grateful for trials we have gone through in our lives. How often do we look back once we are through a trial and thank our Creator for putting us through that?

            A lot of times when a trial happens in a family, it centers around a single-family member. Whether it was something they did to hurt the family, a health struggle they are going through, or so many different options. We often wonder why it had to be them that went through it and ask why we couldn’t do it for them? We have to remember that it is what God had planned for them. They are supposed to learn something from this trial, and we need to let them learn it. We also need to see what it is that we are supposed to learn for ourselves from the trial. In my experiences, it seems like the person that went through the hardship is humble, and accepted that they needed to go through it in order for their family to grow closer. They realize that if they hadn’t gone through it, no one would have had that growing experience.

            Crisis and trials are a part of life. It is something that we just cannot avoid. The one thing we can control is how we see them. Are we going to let them shape us for the positive, or the negative? Will we let them tear our family apart, or bring us closer together. Our Loving Father in Heaven gave us these trials for a reason. In my mind, it only makes sense to try and find out exactly why that is, and grow as much as possible from the experience.