ADVERSITY

I was re-reading President Eyrings talk...I remember weeping as he was speaking...it touched me...it hit me...this is me...this is us!

We have had some challenges lately...many challenges.

It seems we have been hit at every side.

Some of our children are facing adversity.

At times it is easy to wonder "why me" , "why us". I try not to go there.

I usually try to ask myself "why not me"

I remind myself of all of the blessings we have

and we have had so many blessings...

grandchildren, 2 missionarries,an engagement.

We have truly been blessed!

I know many of you are facing challenges today. I pray for you often. I think of you and am strenthened by you and your incredible fortitude. I watch you...I am in awe.

And I know I too can do it...

I have posted part of his talk

I hope it'll help you too...

With all the differences in our lives, we have at least one challenge in common. We all must deal with adversity. There may be periods, sometimes long ones, when our lives seem to flow with little difficulty. But it is in the nature of our being human that comfort gives way to distress, periods of good health come to an end, and misfortunes arrive. Particularly when the comfortable times have gone on for a while, the arrival of suffering or the loss of material security can bring fear and sometimes even anger.
The anger comes at least in part from a feeling that what is happening is unfair. The good health and the serene sense of being secure can become to seem deserved and natural. When they vanish, a feeling of injustice can come. Even a brave man I knew wept and cried out in his physical suffering to those who ministered to him: “I have always tried to be good. How could this happen?”
That aching for an answer to “How could this happen?” becomes even more painful when those struggling include those we love. And it is especially hard for us to accept when those afflicted seem to us to be blameless. Then the distress can shake faith in the reality of a loving and all-powerful God. Some of us have seen such doubt come to infect a whole generation of people in times of war or famine. Such doubt can grow and spread until some may turn away from God, whom they charge with being indifferent or cruel. And if unchecked, those feelings can lead to loss of faith that there is a God at all.
My purpose today is to assure you that our Heavenly Father and the Savior live and that They love all humanity. The very opportunity for us to face adversity and affliction is part of the evidence of Their infinite love. God gave us the gift of living in mortality so that we could be prepared to receive the greatest of all the gifts of God, which is eternal life. Then our spirits will be changed. We will become able to want what God wants, to think as He thinks, and thus be prepared for the trust of an endless posterity to teach and to lead through tests to be raised up to qualify to live forever in eternal life.