Hope

I was pondering the other day how much hope I have for tomorrow, and how much that has grown in me in the past few years.

A few years ago when I would have a bad day or hard things would happen in my life, I would feel so defeated. I would feel like I was failing, or nothing was going right, and there was a very good chance things would ultimately not turn out ok.

But as I've grown in my trust and faith in the Lord through learning how he deals with others by learning in the scriptures, and witnessing and feeling His love for me in my own imperfect life, I have hope everyday. 

When things aren't working out according to plan, I don't automatically go to a place fear and frustration and sadness.

When it becomes apparent to me that I am failing in some major way or making a big parenting mistake, I don't automatically slump into a depression or become afraid for the future. 

Because now I inherently know that God is watching out for me. I trust in his mercy and timing. There is nothing unfixable, and nothing He cannot help me with. God is bigger than any problem I face. I think my old way of thinking is that the Lord should help everything go according to plan. Then when things didn't go according to plan I wondered what He could possibly do to fix this. But now I know that things don't need to go according to plan, and they won't, because we are humans and we live in a fallen world. We agreed to that before we came here. And his way of "fixing" things is not like what I had envisioned. Everyone will still have their agency. Scary, life-altering, damaging mistakes WILL be made. The Lord's tender mercies might be on a smaller scale than you would have imagined, or take longer to come to fruition, and they might not be obvious without careful reflection. But in my 34 years I've come to know that they ARE there. They are always there.

Now when something hard or scary happens I don't blame myself or dwell on what inadequacies in me could have made this not happen. It's not that I need to change. It's that I need to give Him permission to change me. The pressure is off for me to make no mistakes. Instead I rely on the Atonement of Jesus Christ to heal me, to heal those I love, and to keep my heart looking forward. I have learned to have hope.