Adversities

In Sunday School today we were talking about Job and about adversity. It made me think about the various adversities members of my family have gone through in the past couple of years. A couple of quotes stuck out to me.

Elder Orson D. Whitney said: "No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God...and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in Heaven".(quoted in Spencer W. Kimball, Faith Precedes the Miracle).

This quote was particularly meaningful to me because just yesterday I was talking to one of my daughters who is having a hard time, and her question was "What am I supposed to learn from this".
The quote was from Elder Richard G. Scott: "When you face adversity, you can be led to ask many questions. Some serve a useful purpose; others do not. To ask, Why does this have to happen to me? Why do I have to suffer this now? What have I done to cause this? will lead you into blind alleys. It really does no good to ask questions that reflect opposition to the will of God. Rather as, What am I to do? What am I to learn from this experience? What am I to change? Who am I to help? How can I remember my many blessings in times of trial?"

Then President Spencer W. Kimball said: "If we looked at mortality as the whole of existence, then pain, sorrow, failure, and short life would be calamity. But if we look upon life as an eternal thing stretching far into the premortal past and on into the eternal post-death future, then all happenings may be put in proper perspective."

I love my children and I hurt when they hurt. I wish I could relieve all of their suffering, and it makes me realize that our Father in Heaven would like to relieve all of our suffering too, but we must learn and experience certain things in this life. Preventing the problems and suffering would prevent us from learning what we need to learn and perhaps have us miss out on blessings that we need.