Joys and Sorrows

This is for Abby. Here's something to read. :)

I've been thinking lately about trials. It all started with me reading Alma 36:21.

"Yea, I say unto you, my son, that there could be nothing so exquisite and so bitter as were my pains. Yea, and again I say unto you, my son, that on the other hand, there can be nothing so exquisite and sweet as was my joy."

I was trying to wrap my head around comparing pain with joy. I've always had things to repent of, but I think for most people it's hard really understand what Alma the Younger went through. A few days ago, I heard someone refer to the hardest thing they had ever been through. Their most difficult trial. It made me think of my most difficult trial. I'm sure I still have many difficult trials to go through, but it wasn't hard to think of the hardest thing I've had to go through so far. Spending year after year trying to get pregnant only to finally find out that it will never happen to me was devastating. Being selected by a birth family for adoption last spring only to have the birth mother miscarry a few months later almost pushed me over the edge.

And yet, after all of that, I know that once a baby is placed in our arms and we finally become parents, our joy will be exquisite. As exquisite as all of the pain we have experienced. More exquisite than I can even imagine.

This is what hope is to me.