Questions Without Answers

I like to think I have it all figured out.

Most of the time I know what my day will consist of, what I am going to cook for dinner that night, and which activities will consume the hours of my weekend.

I try to live my life as a good person would.

I believe in God and Jesus Christ, and do what I can to be a righteous follower.

I go to church, keep the commandments, and try to serve others.

I went to college and received an education.

I married a smart, funny, driven man who loves me.

We spent a few years enjoying married life together, traveling and having adventures.

Next we brought a beautiful baby girl into the mix and are preparing for round two.

It all makes sense most days.

I followed the path that seemed and felt right to me, and my life is abundantly blessed because of it.

But as I am ever learning, life is not meant to be lived on a straight, perfectly paved and landscaped path.

While there are moments where the ease of downhill walking and fresh flowers make life simple and understandable, those moments aren't meant to occupy the entirety of our existence.

I have already experienced hard things in my life, things that I never imagined I would face or that I would make it through, and unfortunately I know hard things are still to come.

Friends who I love dearly are struggling with trials that seem unimaginable.

And when it really comes down to it all of these stresses and events make me realize I have absolutely nothing figured out.

I have so many questions about the whys and the whos and the hows of this life.

Often times the hardest part of it all is that most of those all important questions have no apparent answers, or at least none that we will learn here in this life.

Why do people get sick?

Why do babies die?

Why do marriages end in anguish?

I tell myself that someday we will understand.

Someday it will all make sense.

Repeat as necessary.

I have been doing some reading in an effort to find a little solace for myself, as well as maybe a sliver to share with those who need it most in this moment.

This quote by B.H. Roberts, a dear friend of our Prophet Joseph Smith, puts a little bit of the struggle into perspective for me:

"Some of the lowliest walks in life, the paths which lead into the deepest valleys of sorrow and up to the most rugged steeps of adversity, are the ones which, if a man travel in, will best accomplish the object of his existence in this world...The conditions which place men where they may always walk on the unbroken plain of prosperity and seek for nothing but their own pleasure, are not the best within the gift of God.  For in such circumstances men soon drop into a position analogous to the stagnant pool; while those who have to contend with difficulties, brave dangers, endure disappointments, struggle with sorrows, eat the bread of adversity and drink the water of affliction, develop a moral and spiritual strength, together with a purity of life and character, unknown to the heirs of ease and wealth and pleasure.  With the English bard, therefore, I believe: Sweet are the uses of adversity!"

Perhaps these trials that cripple us with despair are to, in the end, build us up in a purity that will help us on our journey to be more God-like.

Through these experiences comes unwavering faith or a shattered testimony; a knowledge that God loves us or an anger towards Him that can not be quelled.

In the end it us up to us to decide how these trials will shape our eternal future.

This knowledge that all things will be for our good often doesn't make the trial itself make more sense, or the grief for a father or child any less real.

Life is going to continue on with more of these unanswered questions.

There will always be a reason to ask why.

All I can hold onto are the glimmers of understanding that come in the moments when I need them the most, whether that means they come as I am searching the words of teachers and prophets or as sweet whispering of the Spirit.

For now I will do my best to patiently wait for my answers.