Why should I keep struggling when life is so challenging?

Your life is a precious gift from your loving Heavenly Father, who wants you to learn, grow, and find joy in this life. It is part of Heavenly Father’s plan for you to come to earth to progress and experience the wonders of the world (see “Plan of Salvation,” LDS.org). However, within God’s plan for each of His children, there is opposition in all things (see 2 Nephi 2:14–16), and along with the blessings of mortality come pains, limitations, and afflictions. You are given these mortal experiences to help you learn and to help you rely on your Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.

Elder Orson F. Whitney taught: “No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God . . . and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven” (quoted in Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball [2006], 16).

If the challenges of your life threaten to overwhelm you, seek help. Everyone needs help from others, no matter how faithful they are. Even Jesus needed comfort and strength from His Father in order to face His challenges. The Lord can strengthen you or send others to help and comfort you (see Mosiah 18:8; 24:15). Get professional help or talk to your bishop or someone else you trust. Seek a priesthood blessing. Pray for help, and believe that you will receive it. God has not forgotten you.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland reminded us: “Whatever your struggle, my brothers and sisters—mental or emotional or physical or otherwise—do not vote against the preciousness of life by ending it! Trust in God. Hold on in His love. Know that one day the dawn will break brightly and all shadows of mortality will flee” (“Like a Broken Vessel,” Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2013, 42).

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