"Be patient in afflictions, for thou shalt have many" (D&C 24:8)

I have several plants that I water and neglect, uh, I mean nourish on a regular basis. I sometimes look at them as if they were a pain, more than a pleasure because I so often forget to water them. One plant in particular though, has really grown over the past several months due to the addition of fertilizer that I have added to its regular watering. As I have added the fertilizer and watered it, it has grown so tall that it really needs a new pot. It is now strong and healthy and it gets blooms on a regular basis. It is beautiful...as long as I remember to water and nourish it. The Lord taught similar principles in the allegory of the olive tree. (It can be read here). The "master of the vineyard" cared for his vineyard by nourishing, digging, pruning, and dunging the trees. Sometimes we all need a little "dung", "nourishing", "digging", and "pruning". I liken these necessary  items to trials, burdens, suffering, and afflictions, which sometimes are heavy, stink, or hurt, but they are for our good and benefit, even though we can't see the benefits immediately. I put fertilizer on my plant and it grew and got blooms. It grew stronger and much bigger than I imagined it would. We suffer, are cut down by trials or pain, digging deep within to find solace and peace as we are "refined...in the furnace of affliction" (Isaiah 48:10).

My plant that I have added fertilizer-
note the bloom and size of the pot. 

The Lord has counselled us: "Be patient in afflictions, for thou shalt have many; but endure them, for, lo, I am with thee, even unto the end of thy days" (D&C 24:8; see also D&C 66:9; Alma 17:11). As I have endured and suffered I have wondered what is the purpose of this...why? Some days it is so difficult; and then it hit me. I was growing, and I just couldn't see it. It was like trying to watch a plant grow. The plant is growing, and if I sit and watch it, it is a terribly slow and painful process to observe. But if I water it, dung it, and let the sunlight, nutrients and plant do their individual assignments together...growth happens.

This is the same in our own lives. If we expect to see growth in a day with few struggles or challenges and no discipline, yet hope we are becoming something more or stronger than we were, then we are only exercising impatience and will experience no growth. What the Lord wants for us is more; He wants for us to grow to our full potential. In essence He is saying: "What manner of men [and women] ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am" (3 Nephi 27:27). This is His call to us to keep trying, to keep enduring in those most challenging and difficult times when it seems like there is little or no growth, but just fertilizer, mud, and painful cutting. When in reality, He is nourishing us, and shaping us because "now are we the sons [and daughters] of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is" (1 John 3:2 italics mine).

When we remember that the Lord "searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts" and if we "seek Him" (1 Chronicles 28:9) then we have eyes to "see afar off" (2 Peter 1:9) because we know His vision is greater than ours and so is His timetable (D&C 64:32). It is when we keep pulling up the roots to see how our plants are growing that we begin to lose hope, for there is no growth to be made without water, nourishing, dunging, digging, and pruning. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell said: "Patience stoutly resists pulling up the daisies to see how the roots are doing" (Patience). Therefore, we can't just sit there and wait for our plants to grow, we must keep "pressing forward" that we may partake of the fruit that is most assuredly there waiting for us (1 Nephi 8:21,24,30) and is "most sweet, above all that [we] ever before tasted" (1 Nephi 8:11).

I will be honest, I wish I could be done with some of my trials and afflictions, they aren't what I really enjoy- they are difficult and challenging (I guess that's why they are called challenges). But, through them, I do, we do, become something more: more holy, more grateful, more strengthened "to o'ercome", more filled with faith, "more Savior like Thee" (see More Holiness Give Me). When we are "patient in afflictions" we can choose to become more... more Christlike. What a blessing to be "patient in afflictions, for [we shall] have many" (D&C 24:8)  as we are digged, pruned, nourished and fertilized by One who truly loves us and knows our potential growth, "that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as He is pure" (Moroni 7:48).

This is a group of plants that I have neglected to water.  It looks so sad and droopy...I just forget to water these poor things. 

This is after it has been watered. Truly there is power and strength in water...imagine the growth if I added a little fertilizer!

Click here to view the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing a beautiful rendition of "More Holiness Give Me".

"...They taste the bitter, that they may know to prize the good" (Moses 6:55)

The other morning as I walked in the cold weather, my heart was very heavy. I was having a difficult time focusing on anything positive and was feeling a bit sorry for myself after an incident that had taken place with family the night before. I wanted to quit thinking about it and focus on something else. I really wanted to run away from the problem, but that would do no good and be very selfish. So, as I walked, I looked around at the stark contrast between the white of the snow and the dark branches of the trees. I thought of how the trees go dormant during the winter and that eventually spring always comes after what seems like such a cold and deathly winter; buds appear and bloom into flowers, leaves poke their heads out and grow. Most definitely, "there is an opposition in all things" (2 Nephi 2:11).

I started to make a mental list of all the things that I was grateful for, of oppositions as I walked. This helped me focus on something else other than the heavy heart that I didn't want to keep carrying in the bitter, cold morning. I have to be honest, the "bitterness" came from my foul mood, and the "sweetness" was an effort to change my attitiude. There is not a particular order to this list of oppositions, but each, both the bitter and the sweet, has brought a blessing into my life. I hope you will come up with your own list of oppositions. If we "should never have bitter [or opposition we] could not know the sweet" (D&C 29:39). As the Lord said to Adam, "...they taste the bitter, that they may know to prize the good" (Moses 6:55).  Truly, opposition blesses our lives with bitterness so that we may recognize the sweetness of the Lord and His "tender mercies" (1 Nephi 1:20). Without bitterness, we would not recognize what is sweet. Some of these may not make any sense to you, but this is my list of oppositions...and they need only make sense to me. I share them because I have grown from them, and have tasted the bitter and the sweet, and the sweet is "the most sweet, above all that I ever tasted" (1 Nephi 8:11).

My Short Blessing list of Oppositions 

• being hungry and thirsty in opposition to having enough food and water to eat and drink; not only physically but spiritually as well (see Matt 5:6)
• being bitterly cold in opposition to being warm, especially when I return home to the "warm hearts" of loved ones (see D&C 121:9)
• having a sick child in opposition to having a child become well or my children healthy all the time (see D&C 42:48)
• icy roads that I fall on and have to pick my self back up in opposition to roads that have been cleared and are easy to follow so that I don't stumble and fall (see 2 Nephi 4:32)
• being tired and exhausted in opposition to being awake and alert (see 1 Cor. 15:34)
• feeling alone and abandoned in opposition to feeling totally loved and surrounded by loved ones (see D&C 6:20-21)
• being in excruciating pain in opposition to having no more pain or free from pain (see Alma 36:19; Revelations 21:4; Mosiah 27:29) 
• tears of sorrow in opposition to tears of joy (see Psalms 126:5)
• darkness and night in opposition to sunshine and daylight (see Moroni 7:15) 
• making enemies in opposition to making and having friends (see Matt 5:44; 3 Nephi 12:44)
• barren, no growth in opposition to planting trees, pruning shrubs and  bushes and watching the beauty of these grow (see Alma 33:23)
• impatience, fretting, and worrying in opposition to waiting patiently, being calm, filled with faith (Psalms 37:5-11)

As I pondered these oppositions, and looked around me at the cold of winter that covered the earth, I realized that all these things testify of Christ. They all call us to Him, "He that ascended up on high, as also He descended below all things, in that He comprehended all things, that He might be in all and through all things, the light of truth; which truth shineth. This is the light of Christ" (D&C 88: 6-7). As we go through opposition, which gratefully we do, even though it is difficult and hard and sometimes we desperately don't want to, we can look to Him, the One who knows how to succor us according to our infirmities (see Alma 7:12) and heal our all our wounds and our souls and thus, we may know "to prize the good".