"Not a woman who would sit and bemoan tragedy"

It's not that I rarely use my blog for my own personal musings intentionally, but rather it seems I usually have so much happening, I end up using it to simply keep everyone updated on my comings and goings. (Literally, at times, since I travel so much; occasionally it may resemble little more than a travel log.) So forgive me while I digress from that today, to become serious and personal for a moment, to reflect on some things I've learned in recent weeks and days.

It seems that when life happens, for good or not so good, it all happens at once.

The last week of June this year was one of the best. Ever. As a friend of mine summarized it for me, calling my life the new awesome: "An ipod, a boyfriend, a birthday, and a trip to Spain--all in one week!" It was a good week indeed.

To contrast, if I had to summarize this past week in a similar way it would be as follows: "A breakup, a dead laptop, a dead monitor, a cold (with most noticeably, a loss of voice), being scammed in D.C., and officially deciding (unexcitedly) to prematurely leave the city I love--all in one week!" (But at least the Longhorns won on Saturday.)

But the point of this post is not to make you feel sorry for me. No, actually, the point of this post is to explain what I've learned in the past several weeks about HOPE.

A few weeks ago, was my church's General Conference. President Uchtdorf gave a talk about HOPE. The title of my post comes from that talk. He began by telling a story of his mother, and a time that she didn't lose hope. He says she was "not a woman who would sit and bemoan tragedy." This has become my motto, as I desire to be a woman like that.

At the time I heard this talk for the first time, there were some pretty major things I was hoping for. As time has progressed, things are panning out in ways opposite to those I was hoping for. As I prayed for guidance in my decisions, I realized I couldn't put my hope in those things. Not to say that we shouldn't keep hoping and praying and working for things to happen as we want them to. (I'm still going to keep hoping my laptop isn't really as dead as it appears, or at least, if it is, that the data can be recovered in a timely and cost effective way so that the last 5 weeks of work will not have been in vain.) But when it really, really comes down to it, there's only one place to anchor true hope, and that is in God.

In realizing this, I admittedly didn't know exactly what it meant or how to put it into practice. I turned to the scriptures. I looked up a variety of scriptures listed in the topical guide about HOPE. Particularly, I noted Romans 5:3-4:

"...but we glory in tribulation also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope."

Experience brings hope? I thought about that for a little while, wondering why, of anything else he could have possibly chosen, Paul would have said that experience worketh hope. As I pondered about that, I thought of a line from one of our hymns: "We doubt not the Lord, nor His goodness; we've proved Him in days that are past."

In order to prevent myself from becoming a woman who would sit and bemoan tragedy right now, I have to keep this kind of hope. And for me at this time, having real hope doesn't mean hoping something will work out like I want it to. It can't mean that, because I realize that can lead to being disappointed. (Not always, but it is a possibility.) It means trusting that the Lord loves me, and that He hasn't forgotten me, and that He will guide me and direct me in whatever way is best for me. That hope is strengthened as I reflect on my previous experiences where He has done just that. I've been in tough situations before...He's always seen me through and things have always worked out. So really, I don't have any reason to doubt that this time will be any different.

That doesn't mean I don't feel sad. But rather it means that I'm hanging on to that hope despite sadness, which hope truly is like "a beam of sunlight rising up and above the horizon of our present circumstances." (--Pres. Uchtdorf) In continuing on, I must put my "faith and hope into action," like Pres. Utchtdorf's mother. And that is, to get moving on doing the things I need to be doing right now. While I will continue to hope and pray for specific things along the way to work out as I'd like them to, my main source of hope will be anchored in the Lord as I submit to do His will -- even, and most especially, when it's hard.

I don't understand everything. I don't blame anyone. (Nor do I want anyone else to either.) Times are rough for everybody, and all we can do is the best we can and the best we know how with what we have at the time.

Good things are coming for me. I believe that. I really do. I don't have any reason not to believe that. Through it all, things in my life just keep getting better and more exciting, my experiences richer, and my testimony of the Gospel stronger.

And that is definitely reason to keep hope.





(P.S. Oh, and I just got my laptop back from the computer guy. He fixed it, so it's not dead anymore. Fortunately, some things do work out how we hope they will. (And I'll back it up tonight.))