Funk Soul Sister

 Lately I've been feeling a little like this:

It can be hard, and tricky, this life, and let me tell you, it's been making me want to cry like I've been wedged in a Bumbo chair getting a haircut that I really don't want.

Life is meant to be filled with struggle. I understand this. I even can mostly understand why. It is our struggles that give us strength and help mold us into the person that the Lord wants us to become. Our struggles foster compassion in us for others that we would be otherwise not be able to experience. They serve to teach us how very fallible we are, and, {sometimes relentlessly} remind us that we need heavenly help in everything that we are trying to do, each moment of our lives.

But boy, those same necessary struggles also have a way sometimes of knocking us down and rendering us nearly powerless with feelings of helplessness and exasperation. (And grief and pain and frustration, etc., etc...) Sometimes I wish there were an easy solution, or a bypass button, but there isn't, and that's all just part of the plan. It isn't easiness that teaches us anything. It's difficulty that allows us to learn.

So what do we do?

We press on and muddle through, trying our darndest to get things right. We cry, and rage, and want to give up. We make lots {and lots and lots} of mistakes. We remember the goodness in us and find the goodness in others. We seek forgiveness and we forgive. We help and love others. We ask for divine help, and trust it when it comes, even if it means learning a lesson we are certain we have already learned. We take comfort in knowing that "our destiny is not determined by the number of times we stumble but by the number of times we rise up, dust ourselves off, and move forward."

I have been getting a lot of perspective and strength from President Uchtdorf's talk, "You Can Do It Now!"  It was perfectly timed to help me through a funk that seemed to be stretching on much longer than I would have liked. Reminds me how truly good the Lord is and how understanding He is of all of our fallings, failings, and frustrations. How He loves our imperfect selves with absolute perfection.

We'll all get through it, one mistake, one stumble, and one triumphant rising up again at a time.