At a time when my life was filled to the brim with challenges, I learned a life-changing lesson about the value of cherishing each day.
Photo by Kalen Emsley
Since returning home from a Church mission and marrying my sweetheart, my life has been filled with wonders—and inevitable trials. Learning to love whatever comes my way has changed both my attitude and my heart.
Everything came to a head one week. My husband and I were balancing classes, internships, jobs, and household chores, and we were also trying to find time for each other. We had additional personal and family trials that we were working through, and to top it all off, my husband and I, both introverts, had the challenge of settling into a new ward and a new schedule. We were worn out—physically, mentally, and emotionally. Then a text came, asking if we would be willing to speak in church the next Sunday. “Watch us be asked to speak on overcoming trials,” I joked with my husband. The follow-up text read, “Would you be willing to speak on Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin’s talk ‘Come What May and Love It,’ from the October 2008 general conference?”
Ha. What irony. “Yes, I’d love to.”
As I read through Elder Wirthlin’s talk, his words of counsel soothed my soul. Elder Wirthlin shares the story of a discouraging defeat in a sports game and the advice his mother gave him afterward. “Come what may, and love it,” she said.
Elder Wirthlin continues, “I think she may have meant that every life has peaks and shadows and times when it seems that the birds don’t sing and bells don’t ring. . . . I don’t think my mother was suggesting that we suppress discouragement or deny the reality of pain. I don’t think she was suggesting that we smother unpleasant truths beneath a cloak of pretended happiness. But I do believe that the way we react to adversity can be a major factor in how happy and successful we can be in life. If we approach adversities wisely, our hardest times can be times of greatest growth, which in turn can lead toward times of greatest happiness.”
As I pondered this quote, I realized that this approach doesn’t just apply to the hard times. The concept of “come what may and love it” certainly put my trials in perspective, but it is also an attitude I want to apply to my whole life. When trials come, I’ll love them because I know I’m growing. And when the good times, the happy times, come along, I’ll love those too. It’s easy to take the good days for granted.
I want to receive every day with gratitude, no matter what kind of day it is. Learning to love what comes has helped me both to look past my trials and to better appreciate the blessings of good days.
Read the rest of Elder Wirthlin’s talk “Come What May, and Love It,” and discover four specific ways that he finds gratitude in times of trial.
Source: LDS General Conference
—Elicia Cheney, Mormon Insights
feature image by claudio trigueros
Find more insights
Read President Russell M. Nelson’s talk “Joy and Spiritual Survival” to learn more about how to take control of your happiness regardless of your circumstances.
Read Elder Rafael E. Pino’s talk “The Eternal Perspective of the Gospel,” in which he describes the importance of making life decisions with long-term goals in mind.