Article - All Things Shall Work Together for Your Good

While I was working on my Finding Faith Friday, I found this article. Its a really good article, but it didn't feel right to be my Friday feature so I thought I would share it now. I've highlighted by favorite parts, but the entire article is pretty good, I just didn't feel that the entire thing applied to me. If you would like to read the full article, please click on the title. Tune in tomorrow for my regular schedule article.

All Things Shall Work Together for Your Good


Susan W. Tanner
Young Women General President
May 2004 Ensign

In a sense all of us are in the middle of our own novels, our own life stories. Sometimes our stories feel very intense, and we would like to read ahead to know our own end, to make sure that everything is going to turn out all right. While we don’t know the particular details of our life’s experiences, fortunately we do know something about our futures, if we live worthily.

We are given this insight in Doctrine and Covenants 90:24: “Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good, if ye walk uprightly.” This stunning promise from the Lord that all things shall work together for our good is repeated many times in the scriptures, particularly to people or prophets who are suffering through the trials of their own life stories.

I sense that this promise comes from a tender, caring Father who desires to bless us and give us reason to hope through our earthly journey. Knowing that eventually all things will work together for our good will help us endure affliction like the faithful people from the scriptures who knew of His promises and trusted in them, “having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them” (Heb. 11:13). We too can embrace this promise.

Sometimes we see immediate fulfillment of the promise. Other times we plead for years before we see the desired promises fulfilled.

Everywhere there are young women who are in the middle of their own stories, facing dangers and hardships. As with Peter there will be “angels round about you, to bear you up” (D&C 84:88). They will sustain us as we carry our earthly burdens. Often in our lives, those angels are the people around us, the people who love us, those who allow themselves to be instruments in the Lord’s hands. President Spencer W. Kimball said: “God does notice us, and he watches over us. But it is usually through another person that he meets our needs. Therefore, it is vital that we serve each other in the kingdom”

Thoughts on Infertility

Last year we had to take an adoption class. They gave us a disc with a ton of articles and I just remembered they had some on infertility. I will share them over the next few weeks.

Patrician Irwin Johnson:
"As with any wound, it heals with a scar which can be reopened at an unexpected time. Infertility's scars remain on the soul long after the wounds have healed.

Barbara Eck Manning:
"My infertility resides in my heart as an old friend. I do not hear form it for weeks at a time, and then, a moment, a thought, a baby announcement or some such thing, and I will feel the tug - maybe even be sad or shed a few tears. And I think, 'There's my old friend.' It will always be a part of me."

Al Berk & J. Shaprio:
"Grief is...a natural reaction to the feelings of helplessness when a couple realizes that pregnancy will never occur. This grief over the loss of life's goals - the pregnancy experience and having children - is particularly difficult because our society does not recognize such a loss with rituals or other processes that could allow the couple to work through the time of grief."

Silber & Dorner:
"Infertility is grief experience, although traditionally it has not been viewed as such. Infertility is a loss - it is a loss of the imaginary child (the child the couple imagines would have been born to them). They will go through all the normal stages of grieving for this loss, just as if they had lost a child through death. However, society does not relate to or understand the loss of infertility because it is invisible."

Coming soon...

I have decided to start posting things I find inspiring on this blog on Friday's. I want to highlight articles and videos that inspire me to move forward with faith. For the most part I will highlight articles from lds.org, but I will also be looking for articles on infertility and how to cope with it. If you find an article you want featured, please email me at sourbonk@yahoo.com