I have hesitated to blog lately. Here's why: Every time I look at my blog title I am a little discouraged. While it makes a punny blog title involving our last name, "grin and bear it" is an awfully optimistic saying, and I tend to have a more realistic (ahem-negative) view on life. What if I don't want to grin while bearing it? What if I can't?
If I have learned anything in my last 23.5 years of life, it is that life is full of opposition. Life is challenging and disappointing and one trial after another. There is no escaping the heartache and the exhaustion. I cringe when I hear the popular saying "God won't give you more than you can handle." I know of a surety that He certainly will give us all more than we can handle. And it hurts.
But that's the point. If life was easy, we wouldn't turn to Christ for help. We couldn't progress and grow if we weren't being challenged. We simply can't bear these burdens thrown at us on our own. And that is the whole point of the atonement. This blogger says it perfectly.
I'm not suggesting we might as well just wallow in self-pity. I think it's important that we are strong. It's important that we sort through the muck and find things in this unfair world that make us happy. Really soak in those fleeting moments of pure joy. Because they are out there too. And those moments are what makes this life worth living.
My point is: I am not always going to grin through my trials. I don't think that is what's expected of us. I think we are expected to do our best. And that is what I plan to do.
"For we labor diligently to write, to
persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and
to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do." (2 Nephi 25:23)
