By Michelle Taylor
In the Universe there is a natural balance. Silence, noise, up, down, dark, light, and I am sure you can think of many others in this moment. It is what we learn in elementary school, opposites! I want to talk a little about the opposites of bad and good, positive and negative. In every situation we can choose to see it as a positive or negative experience, we can also choose to be neutral, but for this, let’s just talk about positive and negative. When we have a perceived negative experience, we can trust that in that experience, there is an opportunity for positive to come out of it. There must be balance.
There are people who take a negative experience, and once they have gone through the emotions of the negative, decide to see the good that can come from it. There are people who have taken adversity and because of the focus on the lesson, have been able to fulfill their life’s mission. When we choose to learn from the adversity, or take a hardship and choose to see the lesson, or the positivity in it, we are able to use it to inspire, enlighten, strengthen and help others. In helping others, we help ourselves to grow.
Several years ago, my husband received a Class A driver’s license, which allows him to drive big trucks. Without driving experience, it was difficult for him to find a job. We prayed about him driving cross country with big delivery truck companies. Normally, I have struggled with him being gone, and I would usually go into a panic and depression, but I felt strongly that this was right, so I tried to be strong. I was pregnant with our third child and we decided it would be better to move closer to home to be with my mom. We had hoped that the baby would be born before he had to leave, but it did not happen. I chose to move in with my mom and dad, as I didn’t want to be alone when I went into labor. I took my husband to the bus station and he was off. My heart sank and it was difficult for a time to feel good about anything.
I ended up going into labor a few weeks after he left and he heard the baby cry over the phone. After I went home from the hospital, I wasn’t receiving much help and decided to go to our apartment and just heal there and move on. I had to sign up for government assistance for food, get help from our church to make bill and rent payments. All of this made him being gone all the more difficult, as I didn’t see any benefits from him doing this job, and I really hated being alone and him being gone by himself truck driving. All of this sounds negative, but I worked to hold on to positivity through this experience.
There were good things that I would notice through this experience. I tried to stay in a positive mindset. This was especially important with just having had a baby and two other little girls to care for. I would read my scriptures and pray daily. I started to notice good things that would happen around me. The grocery store was very close to where I lived, the missionaries from our church were across the street, the church was willing to help with whatever I needed, I healed quickly postpartum, and I had a lot of energy to care for my little girls. Focusing on these good things, I felt that there would be something good that happened out of this experience. I would continue to ask Heavenly Father for another job that David could do, where they would accept his experience as a truck driver, even though it wasn’t as much time.
Three months after he started truck driving, I was looking through the classified ads in the newspaper for jobs. There was going to be a job fair for our state’s department of transportation. This job would pay more than he had made in a long time, it would give opportunities for growth, and would of course allow him to be home. He was scheduled to be home to go to the job fair. Soon he was hired in a great area, God provided housing even though there seemed to be none, He helped us cover moving expenses, and we were together again as a family. There is good in even the hardest experiences. Trusting that good would come from this experience we were led to a place where we could help others, learn more of God’s love and experience His miracles.
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