“If the bitter cup does not pass, drink it and be strong, trusting in better days ahead.” Jeffy Holland

Everyone seems to have just one opinion on the difficult times in life. Whether they believe it or not, it’s the most said belief: and that is to suck it up and get through it with a smile on your face. Well I am going to testify that that is NOT the only method for enduring tough times. Take it from someone who has seen family members and close friends die young, family suffering through financial hardships, trust in relationships being broken over and over and over again. Personal struggles of faith, purpose, loss and destiny. Everyone suffers in this life some way or other and people just expect us to get over it. They say “trust in God and things will get better” or “if it’s meant to be then it will happen”. Sometimes I just want to shove a cantaloupe down their esophagus and say “NO! I am in control of my life and I want things to go MY way.” And what’s so wrong with that? I help people, I consider myself a decent person, I look for the good in others. So why do bad things happen to good people?

I remember a couple of years ago my friend and I were watching the news. A tragic event had happened that we were troubled over. There was a plane landing crash that killed two teenage girls. The plane hit the ramp wrong or something and caused it to explode and catch fire on that specific area of the plane. My friend said,” This is why I don’t believe in God. Plane crashes like that are so rare and they didn’t deserve to die. If there was a God, he wouldn’t have let that happen.” Being the young and immature person I was then I didn’t say anything. And I think that might have been because I believed him. Those girls didn’t deserve to die. But if everyone got what they deserved, then this life wouldn’t be a test. We would have to live in a perfect world if good things only happened to good people, but we surely do not.

Incoming! Little House on the Prairie reference again 😛

Last week on an episode it showed the granddaughter of Mr. Ingles and this random guy’s wife being burned to death in a fire. Everyone was so upset and the deceased girls’ husband was having doubts about God. He would say, “there can’t be a God because He let this happen. WHY did it happen?” And the infamous, oh so clever Papa Ingles said, “I can’t know that, because that would make me God.”

We don’t know and probably will never know why such things happen to people who are righteous, God-fearin’ Christians, but we have to hold on to that little hope that God knows what He is doing. Even if we fight it. Even if we say, “He doesn’t care about me” or “I don’t love God anymore because He did that to me”. We can often feel betrayed or abandoned because we simply don’t understand. This is easier said than done though for sure. For example, I’m recently going through a very hard time that is altering my life and I feel betrayed by God. Or at least I did a week ago. I’m slowly coming back together, but it takes work. I tried to ignore God. I tried to believe that He didn’t love me or that His plan wasn’t right for me. But I knew deep down that it wasn’t true. And it takes time to get over bitterness, but the sooner we realize how foolish we are being, the sooner we can pick ourselves back up and be happy again.

God knows us. My favorite LDS apostle, Jeffrey Holland, said in a talk in September 2009:

“We must continue to believe, continue to have faith, continue to pray and plead with heaven, even if we feel for a time our prayers are not heard and that God has somehow gone away. He is there. Our prayers are heard. And when we weep He and the angels of heaven weep with us.”

https://www.lds.org/ensign/2009/09/lessons-from-liberty-jail?lang=eng

The angels of heaven weep with us. How powerful is that?! This thought keeps coming to my mind whenever I find myself burdened by life and it’s nice to know or even think that someone is crying with me. You don’t have to be happy now. You don’t have to get over that break up now. You don’t have to jump back in to being happy right after a hard time, but you need to keep hope. Understand that there is a mourning period to every bad situation, but eventually you will have to stand up. And God isn’t going to do it all for us either. We need to do all we can and then He will take care of the rest. You make things happen. God desires so much for us to be happy. He understands we need to have our bad days, but He is there the second we decide to turn to Him again. So remember that it isn’t a perfect world, but it is looked over by a perfect God. It’s okay to be sad and flustered with life, but you are going to recover from it. And the sooner you realize that, the more time you will have to rejoice. “If the bitter cup does not pass, drink it and be strong, trusting in better days ahead.” Keep the faith my friends.

Become Inspired.

Is it the little things?

I’ve been thinking about what to write about for my first published piece in my new blog. I don’t want it to be super boring, I don’t want it to be ridiculous so people make fun of me (with a legit reason anyway), I want it to be inspirational. Probably what all new bloggers hope for. I’ve never pictured myself as a blogger. I’ve never thought of myself as someone people looked up to. I never thought I would make a difference. I bet a lot of people think like me. We just live our routine life and don’t really think of ourselves as much of anything. We always hear “do your best” or “work hard and you’ll succeed”, and we might think we are doing this, but are we really doing our best every day?

A few things have been on my mind lately. How much we take the little things in life for granted and how much time we could save by just being thankful seems to be number one. Thankful to have a job, thankful to have friends, a marriage, agency, etc. I’ve always been a people-watcher. No, not the stalker that you’re thinking of type, but I love to see people and how they behave. People are so different and it intrigues me. I sometimes go to the store and it saddens me to see people who are so caught up in buying material things that they forget about what they already have. Did you know that only 6.9% of all disposable incomes in the US is spent on food? That means that 93.1% of all Americans’ income is spent on other things. This could include house and car insurance for sure, but I bet a lot of it goes towards recreation and “play money” as well. Why can’t we just go back to the good old days of spending free, quality time with family? I love watching Little House on the Prairie. It’s one of my favorite TV shows. Life is so simple in that world. Everyone believes and trusts in a higher being and knows each other by first name. People work hard for what they want and they are so happy when they have very little. They rejoice when they get wash cloths for their birthdays or a pen for Christmas. That is the world that I want to live in. A world where people really listen to what you have to say and are so grateful for the small things that we would call minuscule now.

Oh, how we humans complicate life. We get so caught up in the pursuit of happiness that we don’t ever just STOP…and be happy right then. I often catch myself doing this. I am in college presently planning on being a physical therapist of some sort and I’ll find myself stressed about school and thinking, “When I graduate I’ll be happy” or “when I settle down in my future, perfect home I’ll be happy”. NO! If we are constantly telling ourselves that we have to reach a goal to be happy, we will never achieve happiness. Be happy now. I can’ t emphasize that enough. Be thankful now. Don’t you let a day go by that you are not grateful for something. It can be your car, your house, the pillow on your couch I don’t care! But show thankfulness. Humbleness is the key to happiness my friends. We need to keep in mind that the little things ARE what make us most happy. So go spend time with your family. Go do something you LOVE! ❤ Go do something that is so amazing that you’ll remember it forever. And do it NOW. Don’t keep telling yourself you’re saving money because we all know it eventually goes towards something else. Don’t keep living your life in routine. Make memories. BE CRAZY!!! Be gentle and kind. Make someone’s day.

Show kindness to people. Charity is the greatest kind of love in this world. A talk from one of my Church’s leaders once said, “those who find relief at your hand will call your name blessed forever.” I firmly believe that. We don’t know the impact we could have in someone’s life. I think that we all have a role to play on this Earth and one of those is being thankful for things we have been given and by showing kindness to others. Give them something to be grateful about. Find your happiness. Do something nice and uncostly with your families this month. Halloween is upon us!! Go carve pumpkins, go trick or treating (and no, it doesn’t matter if you’re over 20! 😉 But do something that shows your family you love them. Why complicate life? This short, precious time we have together should not be wasted. Missing somebody? Call. Wanna be understood? Explain. Want something? Ask for it. Love someone? You better tell it. We just have one life. Keep it simple. When you take things for granted, the things you are granted, get taken. Don’t get caught up in wealth. It’s the cheap, quality time, fun bits of life that make it all worth it. So ask yourselves, is it the little things that make me happy?

Become Inspired.