Mountains To Climb

So this is new for me, but with some encouragement from a friend, here is my attempt at blogging. Mostly I feel this will be my philosophical musings written down. So as my first official post, I couldn't think of a better topic than challenges and trials in our lives. 

Trials and I have a love-hate relationship. I don't particularly enjoy a trial when I'm going through one, but I can honestly say I look back with gratitude after having learned so much along the way. It is the meeting of trials with faith in Christ that has allowed me to learn the most from them. Spencer W. Kimball once said, “There are great challenges ahead of us, giant opportunities to be met. I welcome that exciting prospect and feel to say to the Lord, humbly, ‘Give me this mountain,’ give me these challenges.”

I remember hearing President Eyring quote this a few years ago. This statement has left me awestruck at times that someone would ask for more trials. Trials hurt and stretch you in ways that you don't want to be stretched. They are uncomfortable and can tug at the core of us. But I've seen better how that is part of the beauty of trials for this is how we grow. And growth is a beautiful thing. While I was on my mission, my mother sent me a poem that I have come to cherish. It's entitled "Good Timber" by Douglas Malloch.

The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby thing.

The man who never had to toil
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man
But lived and died as he began.

Good timber does not grow with ease:
The stronger wind, the stronger trees;
The further sky, the greater length;
The more the storm, the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees and men good timbers grow.

Simply put, If there were never trials we could never become anything. I feel it important to say to that trials themselves do not strengthen. In order for us to really come out of a trial having learned something, we need to exercise faith. It's faith in the Savior, Jesus Christ, that allows us to grow and overcome. The hope and trust that we have in Him is our guiding light as we struggle amidst the storms. As I've reread through the talk President Eyring gave, I've been impressed at how it's our daily decisions that shape and prepare us to whether those storms with faith. We build a foundation of faith with our daily thoughts and actions. When we listen to the Spirit of Christ that all mankind is given, we are following Christ. This blog post may be more for me than anyone else, but I loved revisiting this topic. It has filled me with hope as I've relearned many things that I had forgotten for awhile. May it bless you, too.