It's because I love you

Last night Cole lost the privilege of taking "Icee" the penguin to bed with him because he wasn't listening to us {yes, I just posted about how we try not to take things away but it's a work in progress}. After family prayer I squared his shoulders and told him "you know I love you, right? Even when I have to discipline you or take something away for the night?" Cole responded with "If you love me, why can't you just give it back to me?"

Good question. I said that it was because I loved him that I couldn't give it back to him. I was trying to teach him something and that if I gave in and never disciplined him, he would never learn to be accountable for his actions. I wanted him to be a better person.

This conversation has struck me as exactly like an exchange that we might have with our Heavenly Father.

* We have a trial or something bad happens to us.
* We ask God to either take the trial away or give something to us.
* Because He knows what is best for us, He sometimes won't. He needs to teach us because he wants us to be a better person.
* We won't learn anything if He gives us everything we ask for.

It was like a total light bulb went off. I have "known" this for a long time but I've never consciously been the parent in the equation.

For the past ten years I have struggled on and off with severe neck/shoulder/back pain. I've tried every kind of doctor. Chiropractor, MD, Physical Therapy & Acupuncture. It sent me home from a mission early. It crippled me during the first few weeks of my pregnancy with Cole and it sent me to a very difficult, dark place during the first half of my pregnancy with Caleb. This trial has kicked my trash. Time and time again. Sometimes I can get it under control and I manage pretty well and can live life without it affecting me. But sometimes I struggle to make it to lunch or dinner time. Some days Danny finds me laying on the heating pad with both boys on our bed playing or looking at books with nothing even close to a dinner to come home to. I'm going through a rough patch right now and a couple nights ago I asked Danny for a blessing of comfort.

* I've been given this trial that I don't want.
* I was hoping that Danny would tell me that it would soon be over or taken away.
* I was told in the blessing that there was a greater purpose to this struggle. It wasn't about me. It was about being able to help other people. God wants me to become a better person and this is helping me do that.
* I didn't hear what I wanted to hear but I know it's what I need to learn.

I'm trying to be patient and I'm trying to seek out what it is that God wants me to learn from this experience. Some days I feel like it will consume me and that there is no end in sight. But then there are days when I realize that this life is a very small part of eternity. And that someday I will have a perfect, resurrected body that will not give me pain.

Last night I was the parent, and was trying to explain to Cole that I knew what I was doing. But there are many other nights when I am the child, going to my Heavenly Father and begging him to listen to me because I  think I know what I need. I need to be out of pain. I need to be able to function 100% like other people. What I really need is Faith in Him. That He knows what is best for me. And that it's because He loves me that He can't always do for me what I want him to do.

I can almost hear him saying to me, "It's because I love you". And I know that He does.