The hardest thing I've ever had to do.

After a particularly grueling two weeks of homework, calling, and family, and other responsibilities, I've come to a conclusion.


This is the hardest thing that God has asked me to do.  This is also the hardest thing He will ever ask me to do.


But I also realize that I've come to that conclusion many times in my life.


When I was newly married, and my husband and I had our oldest daughter stillborn; THAT was the hardest thing He asked me to do.


When Sweetie was in Washington, D.C. serving a senatorial internship for two and a half months and I was stuck in Logan, Utah going to school; THAT was the hardest thing he asked me to do.


When it took nearly three years for us to have our beautiful Anner after losing our Angel Baby and I'd given up on having children; THAT was the hardest thing He asked me to do.


When I faced a health crisis after the traumatic and premature birth of our Noodle, and found myself drowning in a nasty depression; THAT was the hardest thing He asked me to do.


When my husband and I waited and attempted to adopt a child, and the opportunity never came; THAT was the hardest thing He asked me to do.


When I decided to go back to school despite a calling in the Stake Relief Society Presidency, and having three growing, active children, and trying to maintain a loving relationship with my husband; THAT was the hardest thing He asked me to do.


And now.  Being a Relief Society President is a humbling, terrifying, busy calling to try and fulfill.  Now add a difficult and demanding class.  Pile on wife, motherhood, and homemaker responsibilities.  Plus there are other activities that I participate in.  It can be overwhelming at times and I just end up in a heap of tears when it gets to be too much.  THIS must be the hardest thing that He has asked me to do.

President Henry B. Eyring several years ago in a General Relief Society Broadcast said this:

"The history of the Relief Society is filled with accounts of such remarkable selfless service. In the terrible days of persecution and deprivation as the faithful moved from Ohio to Missouri to Illinois and then across the deserts going west, the sisters in their poverty and sorrows cared for others. You would weep as I did if I now read to you some of the accounts in your history. You would be touched by their generosity but even more by your recognition of the faith which lifted and sustained them.

They came from a great diversity of circumstances. All faced the universal trials and heartaches of life. Their determination born of faith to serve the Lord and others seemed to take them not around the storms of life but directly into them."

I love that last sentence.  As I have gone through difficult times, I have found that I am more determined to follow my Heavenly Father.  Regardless of how hard life becomes.  And so, perhaps that is the reason why my trials come.  As in school, I learn the most in life when I am tested.  So while this season may seem hard, I know that there will come times in the future when I think that God won't test me any greater than at that moment.  But as long as I see the light at the end of the tunnel....eternal life with my Heavenly Father....I can make it.