Life is such an interesting thing. Sometimes life is going great, and nothing can stop you. Other times it seems that nothing can go right. It’s a rollercoaster of ups and downs. But why? Why can’t life just be easy all of the time? Why do we have to have hard times? I personally am okay when things are going easy, and I’m not the most excited for trials and suffering, but I can look back on every time of suffering in my life and see something that I have learned. It is also comforting to learn from the scriptures that suffering doesn’t necessarily mean that we are being punished. That doesn’t mean that transgression comes without punishment, but that’s not the only reason for suffering. Suffering can come for our own personal growth, or because of the actions of others. Often times things in life get hard not because we’ve done anything wrong, but because God wants to prove us and help us grow. I can look back at many times in my life when I just can’t figure out why things were happening, or why life was so hard. I’d be trying to live the gospel, and keep the commandments, yet life was still hard. Eventually, those hard times did pass, and looking back I can see how I was able to grow and learn from those experiences. Through those hard times our Father in Heaven has been able to help mold me more into what he wants me to become. The challenge I’m trying to work on now is to keep a positive outlook on life during those hard times, when I feel that I am suffering. It always helps me to look back on past experiences where the Lord has helped me. When I look at much of the world it also helps me feel grateful, and realize that much of my suffering and trials aren’t so bad. So many people in the world suffer so much more, whether it’s because of their choices, natural occurrences, or the agency of other people. I have to look at them to and realize why that is fair. I then realize that I don’t know why things are that way, but God does. I have to remember that He provided a way to make all things fair in the life to come. It’s so comforting to know that through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, all the wrongs in this world can be made right in the life to come. Suffering is hard, but I feel that the prophet Nephi says it best, “For it must needs be ,that there is an opposition in all things.” If life never was hard, we could never experience true joy, and that is what we always have to remember.