Journal Week 8

As I sit here to write this entry, I have been working for the past 9 hours straight on school work.  About 7 hours was spent on one homework assignment that the instructions say should take 1-1 ½ hours to complete.  I think I understand the material.  The new data is in my head but still a little jumbled, but I’m getting it.  So why does it take me so much longer to do the work than it should?  I’m getting a B in that class --my first academic “failure” (so it seems) in my last 5 years of college.  It’s frustrating and I find myself wondering if this journey is worth the effort.  My family thinks that all I ever do is homework.  My house is a constant mess because my efforts are focused on school.  The graduation date three years from now feels that it will never come.  I think that is why I felt so much inspiration from Elder Holland’s talk “However Long and Hard the Road” (BYU Devotional January 1983).  I deeply felt Elder Holland’s passionate invitation to hang on and not give up.  In my mind, I can hear his voice urging and pleading for me to “hang in and hang on”. 

There were so many touching messages in that talk, I can’t mention them all.  I am printing the talk to use in my personal studies.  One part of his messages is, “If your eyes are always on your shoelaces, if all you can see is this class or that test, this date or that roommate, this disappointment or that dilemma, then it really is quite easy to throw in the towel and stop the fight. But what if it is the fight of your life? Or more precisely if it is the fight for your life, your eternal life at that? What if beyond this class or that test, this date or that roommate, this disappointment or that dilemma, you really can see and can hope for all the best and right things that God has to offer? Oh, it may be blurred a bit by the perspiration running into your eyes, and in a really difficult fight one of the eyes might even be closing a bit, but faintly, dimly, and ever so far away you can see the object of it all. And you say it is worth it, you do want it, you will fight on. Like Coriantumr, you will lean upon your sword to rest a while, then rise to fight again (see Ether 15:24–30).

When Elder Holland spoke of Coriantumr resting on his sword a while, then rising again to fight, I could vividly imagine a picture in my mind of him exhausted, resting against his sword, not hiding or running away or throwing in the towel completely, just catching his breath then moving forward in the cause. This was a powerful message.

I overheard a talk my husband was listening to today by Jim Rohn.  He said something like, “make rest a necessity, not an objective.”  I dedicate myself to hanging in there; to working so hard that I need to take a while to rest, then get back on my feet and keep working.  I know God has a pan for me and I will continue moving, even when it’s hard, to become who He wants me to me.