A friend asked me to share my favorite scripture :)
You know when you’re trying to read when you’re really tired and you have to read the same sentence like five times before it sinks in? It was one of those days.
I used to read two pages of the scriptures each day—just the left page and then the right page when I opened the book—and I was like eleven or twelve and tired and feeling sorry for myself for things that were happening in my life, so I read the first line at the top of this page like five times before I was awake enough to realize what I’d read.
The full verse is “Therefore, cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves—to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life.” (2 Nephi 10:23). I realized that I couldn’t change the things that were happening in my life, but I could choose what to do about them—I could choose to be happy.
That verse has comforted me through a lot of hard times.
As Russell M. Nelson put it, “the joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.” (“Joy and Spiritual Survival”, 2016)
When we keep an eternal perspective and focus on the Savior, our trials and hardships get a little easier because we know it’s all for a reason, and someday we’ll be able to look back with perfect understanding and say “Oh, that’s why you asked me to do that.”
God is good. He won’t ever give us anything we can’t handle without His help. When we pray and do our best to get to know God, we'll start to see Him everywhere, and we'll realize He's been right there with us the whole time.
