Parable of the Blackberries

Just for fun, Adam and I took a Life Stress Test yesterday. This is where you check boxes of anything that has happened in the past year or two. Forget about year for now, these were some of the boxes we checked for things that happened this month:

*Change in sleeping habits (Charlie is teething and only sleeps 4-5 hours at night)

*Major change in health of a family member (Adams Dad and step-mom were both hospitalized this month)

*Change in diet (we attempted to cut out carbs in the South Beach Diet until we read that cutting carbs results in short term memory loss and moodiness)

*Problems with boss -Adams boss said he was a great worker but just not meant to be an Air Traffic controller which resulted in...

*Losing a job

*Changing to a different line of work (still in process, we may need to go back to school, we don't know yet)

*Picking up new hours/ responsibilities at work (I'm trying to work more days and at new places)

* Our identity was stolen as someone broke into our paypal account and charged over $2000

* Personal illness or injury (We both were evaluated by the chiropractor who told us that both our backs are messed up)

Basically any score over 300 is Very High susceptibility to stress-related illness: Our score was 621.

I am reading this months Ensign and there is an article about a Mom whose little boy wanders into the neighbors yard and gets stuck in a blackberry bush. She said once she found him it was hard for her to see her son in pain, getting scratched by the thorns and all, but that she realized that the bush had saved her son from getting further and possibly falling into a pond and drowning.

When we first found out about Adam's job, I was distraught. We had put so much into air traffic control, we have been working towards this for almost three years, we traveled across the country and are paying debt on schooling taken out for ATC. Now just because of one man, we have to start over- it just didn't seem fair. But, the more Adam began to talk to controllers at his work the more he began to think that maybe it's for the best. Other controllers told him about how much they were away from their families, how they missed things like Christmas, soccer games, etc. and how stressful and anti-Mormon the work environment is. A few even said that if they had it to do over again, even though they make good money, they wouldn't be controllers. So maybe God let us stumble into this thorny place in order to protect us from a more harmful situation. The article said, "When we turn to Him in our trials, He carefully pulls out the thorns and comforts our hearts."

A great quote from Elder Cannon says, "The Saints should always remember that God sees not as man sees; that he does not willingly afflict his children, and that if he requires them to endure present privation and trial, it is that they may escape greater tribulations which would overtake them. If he deprives them of any present blessing, it is that he may bestow upon them greater and more glorious ones by-and-by."

My prayer is that our trials will bring us closer together in unity, that we will let God direct our lives a little more, and my hope is that these trials are preparing us for a great blessing.