The Dream

Growing up I dreamed, slept, ate, and bled running. The more the merrier. I created schedules and entered races. I ran track and cross country.

It was my senior year in high school. Region was a week away and then state was two weeks after that. I had just achieved my fasting time. I was excited and pumped for the upcoming race. After school one day we headed out on our daily afternoon run. We headed towards a park behind the high school. I felt great! Today was going to be awesome. The concrete road we were on quickly turned into a dirt path about the same width. The trail slowly slimmed down to produce a single file line of runners. It disappeared into a group of trees on the side of a hill and turned immediately right and then down. As I started running down the hill I found myself alone with no one in sight in front of me or behind me. As I got closer to the bottom of the hill, I picked up speed. I got going faster and faster. At the bottom of the hill I planted my right foot on what I thought was the ground. The second I put all of my weight on that foot the rock, not ground which my foot was resting on, moved and my ankle with it. I felt a tear and pop. I staggered and slowed down. One of my teammates came running up behind me to see me in pain on the side of the trail. He lifted and carried me the mile back to the school. As I took off my shoe my ankle swelled up immediately. Come to find out later my tendons had been damaged and my tibia had shifted down my leg and foot. My dreams of running in Region and State disappeared.

In the following months while I recovered, I thought a lot about what had happened. I experienced frustration as I was limited from certain activities as well as missed out in playing soccer my senior year. I wondered why did this happen? Was this fare? Why now? These are question many of us have asked. As I have gone through this experience and many others, I have been blessed and guided to realize by the spirit that it is not a "bad" thing to go through trials. Good and bad people go through trials. A certain trying experience is not a punishment at all. Often it is a blessing and a complement from our Heavenly Father.

In the Book of John, Christ's apostles ask Christ a question along the lines of, "Is a trial a punishment for sinning?" Here is the story. "And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man , or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." (John 9:1-3)

The man was not cursed with blindness because someone had transgressed. The very opportunity of having an experience which tests and try’s us is what we need to change our very being, grow and become better individuals, and ultimately become like our Heavenly Father and Savior. It is painful but necessary to burn away the impurities.

Let us be grateful for those experiences which allow God's greatest work being the Atonement manifests itself in us and by so doing change us.