Learn not only to adapt to unexpected situations in life but also to find joy in them too.
We’ve all had those days—something breaks, the dog makes a mess inside, we’re late for work, the traffic is endless. Everything that can go wrong, does. Sometimes these days stretch into months, years, or even an entire lifetime.
How do we learn to roll with the punches, especially when they never seem to end?
Brother L. Vance Taylor, a husband and father with muscular dystrophy, shares his experience with learning to adapt to his difficult situation in his article “Roll with It.” After becoming a father, a lifelong dream of Brother Taylor’s, he suddenly faced new challenges in learning how to care for his children.
Rather than complaining about the situation he was in, Brother Taylor “trust[ed] in the Lord with all [his] heart” (Proverbs 3:5). Or, as he paraphrases, he “rolled with it.”
He was unable to do many of the things that other fathers could, like tossing his girls in the air or pushing them on a swing. But that didn’t stop Brother Taylor from being involved in his children’s lives. His daughters have “screamed for joy on the back of [his] wheelchair as [he] did wheelies…climbed [him] like a ladder to reach goodies on the top shelf, and enjoyed incredible front-row parking.”
Adapting wasn’t always easy for him; as Brother Taylor puts it, “fatherhood can be messy.” And yet, he’s used his circumstances to connect with his daughters in a different way.
The struggles we need to adapt to aren’t always physical; they can be mental, emotional, or social. But no matter what we face, we, like Brother Taylor, can “roll with it.”
Read more about Brother L. Vance Taylor’s experience with fatherhood and muscular dystrophy in his article “Roll with It.”
Source: Liahona
—Heidi Knapp, Latter-Day Saint Insights
FEATURE IMAGE BY MOLLYROSELEE
Find more insights
Explore more about how to roll with the punches in Sarah Brown’s article “A Leg Up in Life.”
Learn how to adapt to difficult family situations in “Strengthening the Family: Adapting to Circumstances,” published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
I love this message and the idea that even if we might not have some of the strengths that others do, we still have strengths of our own.