How I live my faith

Living my faith has taken on many different forms in my life. When I was young, I went to church and tried hard to do what I was taught, because I wanted to always do the right thing. When I went to college, my faith was deepened as I faced the typical challenges of life as a student and realized how much help the Lord gives me. I served a mission in Chicago, and my understanding grew. I felt God with me all the time. When I got married, though, and as I was making the decision to get married, I felt the Lord take a step back and let me make my own decisions. I thought this was a sign that I was doing something wrong. Quickly I realized that because God wants us to be like Him, He sometimes has to step back and let us do what we will. At this point in my life, I think my religion changed from something I expressed to something I lived. To put it colloquially, I had to "put my money where my mouth was". It's all well and good to say we should love others, serve them, forgive them, and change our own desires to be more like God's, but it's quite another thing to do all those things on a daily basis with a real, live imperfect spouse. As life became more challenging for us, both with infertility and my parents' divorce, as well as job-related problems, I found myself questioning my faith. Still, in my mind I knew that I knew what I should do, and I kept doing it. Now, though my parents' are still divorced, and we still don't have children, and I still have a lot to change about myself, I find that I can be at peace. I have discovered that God really, truly wishes for our happiness, and that if we trust His plan for our lives, we can be happy in any circumstance. His blessings are all around us, and faith means that we look to see what they are.