My thoughts as of late

I have not written a blog post in a very long time. I felt like I had nothing earth shattering to say. Today, I feel like I need to write down my thoughts. This month has been really hard. I feel like everything that I hold dear is under attack. I feel hurt, beaten down, and broken. I have struggled with a health challenge that I thought would just go away if I didn't think about it. So not true! For my job, I teach 3 and 4 year olds. I love them dearly! But these last couple of weeks I felt like I had nothing left to give them. I was empty. My spark for teaching was gone. I was burnt out. It wasn't just teaching that I felt this way about. I felt like apart of me was gone. I feel like I have lost the majority of my friends. Needless to say I have had better weeks and months. But as I have trudged along this week I have realized that I can be made stronger because of the Savior. He knows exactly what I am going through. He has been through much worse. He knows exactly what I need. I don't understand why everything is happening at once but I don't need to understand. These last couple of days I have been really thinking a lot about happiness. I talked to my mom yesterday and I was telling her how I felt. I told her I feel like I need to fight to be happy. Sometimes we think happiness is dependent upon our circumstances, but it is not. We choose to be happy and sometimes it takes a lot of effort. Ever since I have decided that I am going to choose to be happy and to trust the Lord, it has made it slightly easier to deal with the challenges I am facing. I am so grateful for the Savior. He is my best friend. I know that He can provide peace in the midst of raging storms because He is the author of peace. I don't expect my challenges to go away anytime soon, but I am going to try with all my heart to be happy and to trust the Lord. I am going to try to forget myself and to think others and how I can help them. I am going to forgive and to be kind to those around me. I know that if try to do these things and let the Savior in then He will help me to become whole again. My Bishop said something today that resonated with me. He shared the story of President Henry B. Eyring's dad picking weeds from an onion patch. "Dad was the senior high councilor in his stake with the responsibility for the welfare farm. An assignment was given to weed a field of onions, so Dad assigned himself to go work on the farm. Dad never told me how hard it was, but I have met several people who were with him that day. I talked to one of them on the phone the other night to check the story. The one I talked to said that he was weeding in the row next to Dad through much of the day. He told me the same thing that others who were there that day have told me. He said that the pain was so great that Dad was pulling himself along on his stomach with his elbows. He couldn’t kneel. The pain was too great for him to kneel. Everyone who has talked to me has remarked how Dad smiled, and laughed, and talked happily with them as they worked in that field of onions. Now, this is the joke Dad told me on himself, afterward. He said he was there at the end of the day. After all the work was finished and the onions were all weeded, someone asked him, “Henry, good heavens! You didn’t pull those weeds, did you? Those weeds were sprayed two days ago, and they were going to die anyway.” Dad just roared. He thought that was the funniest thing. He thought it was a great joke on himself. He had worked through the day in the wrong weeds. They had been sprayed and would have died anyway. When Dad told me this story, I knew how tough it was. So I said to him, “Dad, how could you make a joke out of that? How could you take it so pleasantly?” He said something to me that I will never forget, and I hope you won’t. He said, “Hal, I wasn’t there for the weeds.” Now, you’ll be in an onion patch much of your life. So will I. It will be hard to see the powers of heaven magnifying us or our efforts. It may even be hard to see our work being of any value at all. And sometimes our work won’t go well. But you didn’t come for the weeds. You came for the Savior." Talk: Waiting Upon the Lord (byu speeches) I am a the midst of my own weed patch and I will choose to follow the Savior no matter what.