Trials

This week was the first full week back in school for my husband and I. It’s been a really busy week trying to settle in to our new schedules and fitting in all of the other activities we want to do as well. Making it even harder was the fact that we both had to change our class schedules in the middle of the week.

We had decided that it would be fun to take a class together this year, so we’d both registered for a “Critical Reading and Writing” course that seemed interesting to us. Unfortunately, on the first day of class we realized what a mistake that was. The professor was, to put it kindly, a tad bit unorthodox. He spent the majority of the class period ranting unintelligibly about the philosophical process of reading and writing. He also randomly began yelling at us with a generous use of profanity several times, and for no apparent reason. Besides that, the class was clearly going to take a much less practical direction than either of us had expected, and once we discovered that, neither of us were interested in the class anymore. By the time the first day of class rolled around and we figured all of this out though, we had less than 24 hours to find new classes to replace it with.

Eventually I settled on taking “Health and Wellness,” since it was one of the only open classes left that would fit in my schedule and it’s a graduation requirement anyway. Cory chose a high level “Public Economics” class for the same reason; it was one of only a few open classes that would fit in his schedule, and the only one that he was remotely interested in. Luckily for me, “Health and Wellness” has turned out to be my favorite class this semester. Unfortunately for my husband, though, his class choice turned out to be a bad one. On the first day, he was told that the class has an unspoken prerequisite of calculus, which he’s never learned, and that a very thorough and detailed understanding of basic economics is vital as well. On top of that, the professor told him that it will be impossible for him to take another upper level course at the same time as this one, but he was already enrolled in another upper level course that he enjoys. In other words, the class is completely over his head. To compound the problem, the deadline to change class schedules had already passed when he had his first day of the class.  So now he is stuck with a class that he can’t pass, with no way of changing it.

After all of this chaos, my husband and I came to a conclusion. Ever since we first came to our university, we’ve had a lot of trouble with financial aid, bad professors, bad courses, unhelpful faculty, a spiritually hostile environment, a degree program we weren’t interested in, and an inability to affect change in any of these areas. As a result of the new problems we’ve already been dealing with this year, we finally decided that we didn’t belong at this school and we started seriously looking into transferring. The decision was almost made for us to withdraw and move on, when we realized that there were some insurmountable difficulties for us in transferring. To sum it up, our university’s curriculum is essentially incompatible with any other college’s. As a result, very few of our units would transfer anywhere else and we would basically have to start over wherever we went. Clearly, this was not an option for us. And so, all of our hopes for a better college experience were promptly squashed, and the sobering reality sunk in that we are, in fact, stuck at this school.

We were still dealing with that reality when we went to church on Thursday night. Little did we know that God had something very important to say to us!

The message at church was about troubles in life. More specifically, it was about why we have them and how to handle them. During many points during the message, our pastor mentioned ideas that seemed to be directly for us. Oh yes, I have no doubt that God was speaking to us that night. And this is what He told us:

God allows us to go through circumstances in life that aren’t always pleasant in order to teach us things. He lets us go through troubles in order to make our characters more like Jesus. By dealing with trials, we develop endurance and learn to rely on God more. In fact, the Bible tells us to rejoice in the face of trials! Does this mean that we have to be happy about bad things that happen to us? No. It means that we should learn to praise God despite bad things that happen to us. Not only does this bring glory to God, but it’s the way that we experience true joy. If we can praise God even during the bad times in life, that’s really saying something. God wants to bring us comfort and peace during these times, and keeping our hearts open to Him instead of closing them off allows Him to do that. Trusting His wisdom and goodness is the trick to getting through trials without losing your joy.

For Cory and I, being stuck at a university that we really don’t like is a difficult trial. At first, we didn’t understand why this was happening to us, or why there was nothing that we could do about it. But at church God reminded us about His promise to use all bad things for the good. Although we don’t necessarily know what God wants to teach us through this particular trial, we do trust that He knows what He is doing. That doesn’t mean that I like being at this school any more than I did a few days ago, but it does mean that I’m not going to let it make me bitter. I’m determined to praise God for all of the blessings that He has given me, and for being the amazing and beautiful Creator that He is. Thinking about that is enough to put a smile on my face every day, no matter where I am or what I’m doing.

So what about you? Will you praise God through your trials? If you do, I promise that you will find a sense of peace and joy that nothing else can give you.

6 comments

  1. Just as a reminder, I will not approve any rude comments on my posts. You can disagree with what I say, but there is a fine line between that and just being mean.
    So be nice! =]

  2. Awesome post Heather! You have the right attitude! We all face trials and tribulations. Most people do not understand why God allows these things to happen. It is important to understand that adversities in life strenghten our characters, our values and our faith. I thank God everyday and realize that regardless of how bad things might seem at times, I am truly blessed with so much. We all are, if only we’d count our blessings!

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