I can do hard things!

Have you ever done something that you thought was really hard? How did you feel while you were struggling during the task? Yet, how did you feel afterwards when you accomplished the impossible task? I remember an experience I had a few years ago which I would like to share.

For a church youth conference (an activity where the young men and the young women would go for a couple of days and do some fun stuff), we were going on a hiking/rappelling trip in a place called Robber's Roost in Utah. I wasn't particularly excited about this trip but I decided to give it a chance. A lot of my friends were going anyways so I might as well go hang out with them for a couple days out in the middle of nowhere. We traveled down there and camped at the trail head the first night. The next morning, we were off and running. The first day was really fun. We were navigating through these slot canyons and squeezing into narrow passages and rappelling down steep inclines and all sorts of fun. Rappelling wasn't really my thing but I was doing ok with it. At the end of the first day was where the problems started happening. Utah was in a pretty good drought at this point in time, but we were assured that the areas where we were camping had plenty of water to drink. We get to our first campsite...and there's very little water. There was not nearly enough for everybody who was on the trip to fill up their water bottles. We managed to find a place where water was dripping off several places and placed our water bottles underneath the drops and prayed that in the morning our bottles would be full of water. A lot of them were thankfully and we continued on our way. This 2nd day was much Much MUCH harder. We were tired and sore from the hike the day before, we had very little water, a few in our group had injuries that prevented them from walking very good, and a hike that was supposed to be only 9 or 10 miles turned out to be more like 20. There was a few times when I didn't think that I was going to make it, yet when this thought came into my mind, so did another one. The theme of the trip was "I can do hard things." This gave me comfort and helped me keep one foot in front of the other. A scripture also came into my head found in the Book of Philippians: "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." (Philippians 4:13) http://lds.org/scriptures/nt/philip/4?lang=eng Needless to say, there was a lot of praying done that day. Yet, at the end of that second day, we made it to the campsite where, thankfully, there was plenty of cool water to drink. We had a little bit farther to go the next day and I had never been more thankful to see a car in my life. We had made it! It was really hard, and we almost gave up, but we made it.

In sports, we often see teams with a huge challenge in front of them. The same is true with my BYU Cougars in the year 1990 when we hosted the #1 ranked team in the nation, the University of Miami Hurricanes. This team the year before had won the national championship and it's not too often that really good teams agree to play in Provo. The game went back and forth until this play to put BYU ahead for good...completing the victory over a really tough opponent.

I know that we can do hard things. Our Savior, Jesus Christ, suffered all of our pains. He knows exactly how we feel when we go through these hard times. If we turn to Him, he will be right there to comfort us and give us the strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other.