Grateful for Trials

Today in Relief Society we had a lesson based on President Uchtdorf's talk entitled, "Grateful in Any Circumstances." It's a wonderful talk and if you haven't read or listened to it, you should really check it out!

In his talk, President Uchtdorf explains that we should always be grateful to our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ even at the hardest of times and when it seems as though there is little to be grateful for. One thing that our Relief Society teacher had us do was very inspiring and it is something I never want to forget.

She passed around a basket with slips of paper and pens inside. She told us to pass around the basket and vaguely write a trial that we are currently going through on one of the slips of paper. We would then fold our paper up and place it back in the basket. This went on throughout the lesson, women silently scribbling out their problems of today and then passing them along. I found it was easy for me to come up with a trial to write and for some reason I felt it was probably one of the bigger trials among my peers. At the end of the lesson, the teacher had us pass the basket around once more and take a random slip of paper so that we would be reading another woman's trial. 

When I picked out my sip of paper, it said, "I have a very bad relationship with my father." The teacher then asked if anyone in the class would trade their trial for the one on their slip of paper. Not one person said they would. 

Would I willingly trade my amazing and wonderful relationship with my own father in order to remove my current trials and struggles. Never! He is far too precious to me! But what I loved about this little demonstration was that it helped me to remember that things could always be worse. I could have a horrible relationship with my dad, but thankfully I don't. And I'd much rather trudge on through my small trials than go through something like that. 

The Lord will never give a trial that we cannot handle. I take such great comfort in knowing that. I know that the trials we are all going through are placed in our paths for specific purposes and we should remember that there ismuch to be grateful for.