Adversity

During the week, I talked to President Crickmore on the phone and he asked how we were doing. He was worried about us because we had both been quite sick. My response was, “President, I think we’ve had it too easy.”

Throughout my life, I’ve always known that adversity lurks just around the corner. In my early years, because of my hearing disability, I suffered a great deal of it. In those years before I became an active disciple of Jesus Christ, adversity traumatized and stigmatized me, and, kind of like a steam roller, it smashed my happiness and crushed my confidence. That began to change when, at the age of twenty, I came to know my Father in Heaven. Through Him I found hope and meaning to what was happening to me.

Adversity still follows me. I still have a hearing disability which makes it hard to communicate at times and which separates me from even my loved ones. I still get sick. I still have many set backs and disappointments, but in them all I can find the Lord’s hand in my life.

Let me explain by an example. I’ve always wanted to hear like a normal person. For that reason, I have asked for a number of blessing at different times in my life in the hopes that I would be healed and that this particular adversity would go away. Several years ago, I asked my bishop to give me a blessing. We prepared for it by fasting and he came to my house to give me the blessing. This bishop I had grown to love and to respect. By his hand, I had seen many small miracles through the experiences we had shared together, serving the youth of the ward. He laid his hands upon my head and paused for a very long time, and when he finally spoke he said something that has meant a great deal to me ever since than. He said that through this hearing problem the Lord had humbled me. He said that through this life long trial the Lord had brought me to where I was that day: a strong and active member of the His Church, happily married with a beautiful wife and four wonderful children.

The truth of his words spread like a light through my soul. I could suddenly see so many roads that I could have gone down which would have led me far away from where I was that day. I could see that this adversity was really a great blessing of love from my Father in Heaven.