Life is Always Right — D&C 102-105 — Life Experienced with Terri Anne Flint

“Life is always right.” When I first heard this phrase, I couldn’t have disagreed more. How could it be right that I never had one baptism on my mission in southern France when I worked so hard and obeyed all the rules? It couldn’t be right that my father became a paraplegic just months before retirement and then died too early. My life list of injustices, heartbreak and disappointment is long. How could these painful, dark times ever be called “right”?

The Saints who joined Zion’s Camp could have called the experience wrong and wasteful. Instead of saving the saints in Missouri, they only had pain and suffering. But curiously, that’s not how they saw it. Wilford Woodruff explained his thoughts, “…We gained an experience that we never could have gained (in) any other way. We had the privilege of beholding the face of the prophet, and we had the privilege of traveling a thousand miles with him, and seeing the workings of the spirit of God with him, and the revelations of Jesus Christ unto him and the fulfillment of those revelations…. The experience (we) obtained in travelling in Zion’s Camp was of more worth than gold.”

Maybe life is always right. In hindsight, sometimes later than sooner, I know my trials have not been wasted. My mission gave me a solid foundation of the gospel. My father’s tragedy healed childhood wounds. I try not to judge because I’ve been judged with prejudice. When examined carefully, it is true, life is always right, but even more true, God is always right.

“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.” –Elder Orson F. Whitney

“Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” – John Lennon

Life is Always Right — D&C 102-105