endure

There is a door hanging on a wall of my favorite building. It is a beautiful door. I feel like it describes my life: 80% painted with a cool, shabby chic varnish and 20% browned with words continually burned in the wood to the point of nonrecognition. That's me 20% of the time, clueless and lost in a circle of chaos. Though these words are someone's thoughts revisited many times. Probably my thoughts. I'm swimming in an ocean of my thoughts.

I sit there next to my door, just swimming. A girl walks by. She's on the phone and speaking as loudly as she dares. She says, "If this were normal life . . . " I didn't hear the rest because my thoughts were: "HELLO! This is normal life!" We are real humans living real lives. We are experiencing real and normal things.

"It's not enough to have to endure trials to get through them. We have to endure them well."
{Ensign, March 2010, Enduring Well, p34-37}

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to endure. I feel like enduring is all that I am doing these days: enduring through classes and projects and work and life. But all that has a negative connotation. Lately this thing called enduring has come to mean something different to me. Something wonderful! More than anything, I feel like enduring means simply to live. To live well through the good and the bad.

There's a catch. My door doesn't have a handle. My Savior is knocking and wanting to help me, but unable to come in. It is my choice to open it. It is your choice too.

Love this picture titled "change always comes bearing gifts." How fitting.