Six weeks ago, in a conversation with my husband, we sat discussing the general gist of life here on earth. The conversation sounded something like, “Since we’re really just down here to figure stuff out, wouldn’t it make sense to just get it all over with, go through it all now? I mean, if there no other point in being here but to grow and learn, I say let’s get it learned!” I think I might have even said, “Bring it on! Let’s get learning!” at some point. hmmmm.
Five weeks ago, I had a massive epidural hematoma in my skull as the result of an otherwise silly accident. I had brain surgery and was hospitalized for days and days. Apparently, I almost died. I’ve been learning how to do pretty much everything all over since.
Four weeks ago, my toddler was rushed to the E.R. struggling to breath from a nasty croup.
Three weeks ago, car #1 died.
Two weeks ago, car # 2 died.
One week ago, almost everyone in the house started vomiting.
Five days ago, my daughter passed out in the hallway and hit her head as she plummeted to the ground.
And two days ago, well, two days ago the tree roots in the front yard finally won possession of the sewer line. That’s all I can really say about that because, well, it was pretty gross and the whole house still smells.
The running total for the month is now somewhere around $45,000, 400 Lortabs, 3 bottles of muscle relaxant, 70 Band-Aids, 5 boxes of tissues full of tears, and at least one possible nervous breakdown.
So my question to you is, did I ask for it?
Holy cow, Justine. Your accident was enough, imo. What a month+ you have had. Let’s hear it for growth?
Did you ask for it? No way. Life happens.
Someday I will tell you about the start of my mission. I had heard that humble missionaries are the best missionaries and I wanted to be the best missionary so I prayed to be humbled.
Rest assured I have never prayed for such a thing since.
You must be a spiritual giant by now. Either that or your rolled up in the fetal position whimpering softly.
Wow. That’s incredible.
If I were closer (or if I knew you in person period), I’d be driving over with a bucket of chocolate and home spa treatments.
While pregnant with their third child, my friend and her husband were discussing how they never had any “Big” trials. They had felt immensely blessed and wondered if they would ever be given something hard to bear.
Their third child was born with congenital heart disease.
But they didn’t remember the conversation about the “Big” trials until almost a year later. They laugh about the conversation now (their son, btw, is almost 2 and is doing really well) and they, too, always ask themselves, “Did we ask for it?”
I have no answer.
I’ve been wondering the same thing recently. Just be very careful what you wish for or pray for. It may come, but never in the way you expect!
Here’s hoping the next few months are totally boring, uneventful, and pain-free.
There’s a lady in our ward that prayed to understand sacrifice. Her house burned down two days later.
Frankly, I don’t think we ‘ask’ for it, but sometimes when we decide we’re ready for the next level, the next level arrives in a hurry.
No pity, ladies. Life happens to everyone, eh? But thanks for the kind words. I really do want to talk about this concept. I like the comments made. Maybe it just comes in a hurry, sometimes when we ask for it?
There seem to be years of stagnancy (at least in my pathetic life), followed by bursts of stress and agony. I don’t have any idea if I actually do any growing from it, though. How does one quantify that exactly?
I had a friend who prayed for humility and then found out her 3 year old had diabetes. I’ve learned never to pray for that. But life happens. And wow! You’ve had much more life than one can possibly imagine. I hope you have some help/family around.
Justine, my husband and I were talking about this, about how life really is about growth and learning. He sees patterns in the scriptures of times of trial, and then times of rest — bursts and stagnancy, if you will. Look at Nephi. Crazy stuff for quite a while, and then they rested in Bountiful for years before hitting the sea. It might be a pattern to look for in the BoM?
When we were asked by Pres. Hinckley to read the BoM, I marked all the trials-related verses in green, and all the deliverance-related verses in blue. I think there might be another layer to consider in seeing the flow of trials and ‘breaks’ ??
Well, I have told God that I didn’t think I could do what he was giving me - my life was too hard (I had a small bout with cancer). And next thing you know, life kicked up a notch. My son was diagnosed with an agressive tumor, my cancer came back, he did chemo, I did radiation.
Surprise, surprise we got through it (although not as gracefully as I would have liked), and it was a whole lot harder than the life I was telling Him I couldn’t do before. I think we are far more capable than we think we are, but I don’t know that we ever purposely “ask for it.”
Wow! That’s a list of trials good enough for a best selling novel.
Sometimes we get what we ask for and sometimes life just happens. I have always wondered why sometimes everything happens at once to good people. I went through a three year period of just plain hard. I look back on that experience and think, I am truly grateful for the lessons and growth that came from getting through that time in my life. Still, if someone came and offered me the same opportunity to grow through those same trials, I would never have the courage to say “Yes let’s do it again.” Just like I have no desire to relive highschool or any phase of my life, and I have had some pretty good times. Sometimes I think the lesson is just that Wow! I lived through that. I’m stronger than I thought.
I don’t think we ever “ask” for it. I think the Lord just knows us, and we go through what we do to learn certain things. Life is full of ups and downs. I think of life as a circle - we are always somewhere on that circle - either at the top heading down, or at the bottom heading back up. I like the times best when I am in the middle, calm time. But that never seems to last long. It is our test to remember that the Lord will not give us more than we can handle (I struggle with that sometimes) and that all these things give us experience.
I hope things start heading up for you soon.
I don’t think we “ask for it”, but I do wonder if sometimes the Lord gives us promptings that something may be coming up, and we may interpret those feelings in different ways. We went through an intense period of trials for about 7 years. Then things cycled between fairly easy and somewhat challenging for a few years. The last 2 years have been pretty stress-free. I have been wondering if something is around the corner. I don’t know if it’s just because life has seemed too easy lately, or because the spirit is whispering to me to get ready for something.
Do we ask for it? Sure. Why not? We ask for blessings and get those don’t we? (And besides, aren’t trials usually complicated forms of blessings?) I’m not saying YOU asked for it, or that trials are always asked for, but if we tell Heavenly Father we’re ready to be humbled and the humbling commences, why write that off as coincidence? We’re often quick to give Him credit for blessings, why not trials? Maybe we are hesitant to credit Heavenly Father with anything associated with pain and suffering…but we have to remember He will do what it takes to brings us back to Him and if pain and suffering are involved then so be it. This reminds me of 2 Cor. 4:17 “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory”. Our afflictions work FOR us, they work in our favor… So yeah, sometimes I think we ask for it. I’m just usually not brave enough to ask for it.
Yes, you asked for it. When God said, “Here’s the plan, who wants to go?” you raised your hand and said, “I do! I do!”
We all asked for it.
Did I ask for my daughter to have cancer? I don’t think so (other than agreeing to be here). Was our family prepared for it to happen? Yes. I look back on that time now and I know that we were stretched beyond what we thought we could bear.
For me, asking, “Did I ask for this? ” is similar to asking “Why did this happen?” We want to put events in our life in categories. We like for things to fit in neat boxes, to have cause and effect.
The fact is, I don’t think everything does. There were so many things that I do believe came together during the time that my daughter was diagnosed. Things that took years to put into place. Things that only the Lord knew we’d need at that time. Things that didn’t make sense until she was diagnosed and those events began to play out.
It is also possible that I have a hard time that anything I would need to learn would require that my child, a toddler at the time, suffer through what she did. And I freely admit that is difficult for me to put into context.
I do know though that we were never alone. That the Lord walked with us through that time. When my husband’s mother died of cancer during while our daughter was still in treatment, he was there. I can never, and will never doubt that he is aware of each of us because of that experience.
But I don’t want to think that I learned that because of what my daughter went through. So, for me, I was prepared, but I didn’t ask for it. That would make me the cause.
Oohhh, good points. This is giving me so much to think about. You’re right, I signed up for this because I’m here. But I hadn’t even considered the ramifications that you bring up Mommom. How does that kind of learning filter into our children and our greater family? I really don’t know.
But you’re right that I ask for blessings and help. I certainly could ask for other things too, eh?
I have to say that I agree with Mo Mommy. Some of my learning has come in the form of difficulties for my children and I choose not to believe that God choose to make my children’s lives hard to teach ME a lesson.
Things happen.
That being said, I am sorry for your crazy month. I hope you guys are all ok..
Ooops,
I meant Mommom
What?! No Xanax? No Valium? I’d say you’d have earned them.
In all seriousness, best wishes to you and yours.
I know you don’t want pity - how about empathy? Because, ugh, what a month. I don’t think God sends us trials. I can’t believe that, because that would mean that He is purposely making some people’s lives easy while making other’s lives extremely difficult. Some trials are caused by other humans. If God was sending that trial, that would mean we have no free agency.
The stuff we’ve gone through in the last year - I don’t think God sent that our way. I do think He’s very interested to see how we deal with it - whether we collapse and self destruct or realize what’s important and grow stronger - whether we turn toward Him or away. When we thought we’d lost our house, and those prayers weren’t answered (at first), I clung to the idea that God still loved me, but was just not that interested in things like where I lived or my physical well being. He is/was only interested in my spiritual wellbeing and progression.
That’s how I made sense of it, anyway.
forgive my wayward grammar and apostraphes - I’m tired.
There was a time when I really felt a yearning to be closer to the Lord (not that I don’t now), and I had some pretty strong ideas that if I were to get closer, I’d have to go through horrendous trials to do so. I found myself praying, “I want to get closer to you, Father, but I don’t want to have to do the hard things it’s going to take” followed by some form of “I don’t trust your opinion of what I can handle.”
I think in some ways we do ask for trials. We certainly need them. I certainly don’t know how to be humble during them. I still find myself praying for the easy path. I also still feel kind of spiritually stagnant. And I do think the two are connected.
I think you ask good questions, Justine. And I really like a lot of what has been said here.
(How did I not know about some of these things? You handle your trials so much more quietly than I do!)
Ok, so I’m honestly curious to know people’s thoughts on the scriptures that talk about how God does proactively chasten us and try our faith. I know it’s totally hard to process, and this is the kind of discussion that can end up hurting the brain, but if we are told God does chasten us and test us, and if we understand that His ways are not our ways, is it possible that He does sometimes send hard stuff our way when HE believes we are ready (whether we consciously ‘ask for it’ or not)?
And if we ask for growth or help to become better, might that not come in the form of trials?
I shared a quote over at my blog, and more thoughts as I am mulling over this. The quote at least I think is worth a glance…too long to post here. Just skip to the indented text if you don’t want to endure my mullings and musings.
Is this a case of “Be careful what you ask for, you might get it?” I dunno.
I’m certain that list of calamities isn’t what you had in mind, so I don’t know whether you asked for it or not. Whether it was or wasn’t, what did you learn?
No, don’t answer that right away. Lessons in feeling don’t necessarily have to make any sense to our thinking, conscious minds. Or, perhaps it requires time for raw pain to get composted into wisdom.
Sometimes I think there’s been enough time for the pain to be composted, others it still hurts as if it were day one. And it’s been over 10 years. The mind is an amazing thing.
The phrase, “God won’t give me any more than I can handle,” has taken on an additional meaning to many. One that means things they do experience in their life won’t be painful. That if they do the right things they’ll be protected from those things.
I think the phrase, “being stretched” is more accurately descriptive. Stretching at first produces some pain, a pinch in some cases - more if the muscle is tighter. It depends on the person and the situation. But after, if you’ve stretched properly you actually perform better, with less pain, because you stretched.
For me, sometimes the stretching has been so great that I was to the edge of what I felt I could bear. But I knew I could turn to the Lord, the experience we had strengthened and solidified that testimony.
Taking the end of the quote from m&m and this discussion another step, just as I couldn’t be the cause of what happened to my daughter I was really afraid of what was next. If life would need to get more difficult in order for me to continue learning, what the heck would be next?
That fear ate at me for a bit. It no longer does, thankfully. Not because I’m not afraid of that kind of trial, that will always be there, but perhaps because I’ve had other things since then as well that helped realize again the kind of power that truly is on our side to help see us through whatever we face.
I’m still not sure that we ask for it though. Did Job?
I agree about the being stretched idea. And I love what you have shared about the power that is there to help us. I think those are the kinds of things that we are here to learn.
Another layer of this is that I recall hearing a few times that we shouldn’t seek trials, so in that sense, I don’t think we necessarily ask for the things we get, but like someone said, I think we did in effect agree to have trials (maybe even some of our specific trials) before the veil was drawn.
Justine- I am on pins and needles wondering how you are surviving all of this. Do you have family help? ward help? friends who will come and cry with you? It is amazing to me that you can even blog about this coherently. Whether you “asked” for it or are being given an opportunity to prove your mettle- you are certainly doing it. Just don’t try to do it all alone- it sounds like you need some “boots on the ground” more than philosophical help. (Just to be clear, I am in no way questioning your ability to handle things- just sending you hope and prayers that it can be made easier for you)
You should likely question my ability to handle things, Christine! I think the accident imparted such an enormous sense of gratitude for my life, that the rest of this stuff has just been kind of comical.
I’m still spending my days crying when I think about my accident. The neurologist’s voice keeps echoing in my head, “you almost died.” “One more hour, and well…” “This could have easily been fatal…” I’m just so grateful to be alive, that I just want to hold my husband’s hand all day long, and kiss on my kids. The stresses of all this other stuff have been largely mitigated by that.
I’ve decided I don’t care if I asked for it or not. I just want to learn something and make something out of it. Whether it was of my own making or not, there’s no point in not making good out of it.
I just think I need to hold on to the Lord even when He’s let go of me. He let’s go so I can stretch, and if I’m not the one holding on, I’ll really be left to my own ruination.
Happy days, ladies!
Justine, does it really feel like he’s “let go” of you?
Wendy, I feel like a kid who is learning to walk, and the parent has let go so the kid can try it, get better, go farther, have more success. The kid won’t learn to walk without the parent letting go. I don’t think the Lord has left my life or anything, but I do feel like He has stepped back and said, “Come unto me”, in a pretty big way.
That makes sense. I didn’t think you meant he left your life, but was wondering what exactly you did mean.
This thread is making me cry, but thougtful tears. Justine, I think you are learning more than you realize. It just might take a while, like some have said, for the pain to convert to wisdom. Then one day you’ll feel something inside yourself that is larger, more solid and closer to being like Christ.
I admit to being afraid of what the Lord thinks I can handle and consciously making my own trial by remodeling my home for four years, hoping that would be enough of a trial. I realized recently that I needed to have more faith in the Lord’s plan for me, whatever it entails. Now that my house is almost done (and yes we are talking about moving) I am starting to see how my kids may have been negatively affected in a spiritual way from all my busyness with the house. So my own trial choice may not have brought the results I wanted. (I guess I am forgetting the extremely clear answer to prayer that told me to buy this house and make the drastic changes that would make it workable for my family. It was one of those prayer experiences I share at church because when I prayed in desperation to know where to move, the address was spoken in my mind and I had written it off as too much work).
I feel that when we say to the Lord, I am ready for some action, bring it on, He just might. Because this life is the time to prepare to meet God. Justine, even though it must be frightening to have felt the Lord let go of your hand, I think you are right that he wants you to learn to walk on your own so that you can have the strength to go to Him. He loves you more than you know, and must be waiting anxiously for you to take His hand again.
Thanks for asking this question. I hope you are strengthened to bear all these trials and have everything you need. God bless.
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