Adding Sunshine

Quotes from my study:
“Where there is sunshine, shadows must be there too.”

“Let us constantly make a very conscious effort to see both sides of every coin allotted to us in our lives. Even though both sides might sometimes not be immediately visible to us, we can know and trust that they are always there.”

“…our difficulties, sorrows, afflictions, and pains do not define us; rather, it is how we go about them that will help us grow and draw closer to God. It is our attitudes and choices that define us much better than our challenges.”

“When in health, cherish and be grateful for it every moment. When in sickness, seek to patiently learn from it and know that this can change again according to God’s will. When in sorrow, trust that happiness is around the corner; we often just cannot see it yet.”

“Consciously shift your focus and elevate your thoughts to the positive aspects of challenges…”
(“Opposition in All Things” by Elder Mathias Held, 2024)

My response:
When I read Elder Held’s article, I was in the middle of disappointment and frustration thinking about mishaps of my surgeries. Two of them recently resurfaced painfully in my ankle and hip.

Recently my ankle had hurt to walk. Something had been “broken” in my ankle over 20 years ago because it was “the best handle [those performing the surgery] had” during my last knee surgery. After the anesthesia from surgery had worn off, my ankle hurt worse than the area around my tibia which had been cut almost all the way across to cut out a wedge of bone and screwed back into place with a screw as long as the cut as well as others holding the plate in place. In some way my ankle had been injured accidentally and perhaps carelessly. I felt that shadow every step I took.

Recently pain in my hip limited my activity. Over ten years ago, while removing a piece of loose bone in my hip, injured during child birth, the surgeon dislodged my labrum. That shadow haunted unexpected twists and turns.

As Elder Held’s words rolled around in my head my perspective shifted. I remembered that out of the several surgeons I had been to, the one that sacrificed my ankle was the only one who showed concern for the overall degeneration of my jointline by having me jog down a hall to observe the varus bowing of my leg. Too young for a knee replacement at about 20 years old, he performed a procedure (high tibial osteotomy) infrequently performed on people under 40. I went from pain in every step before the procedure, to walking pain free for most of the more than 20 years since that surgery, even with the “scrunched” ankle.

Regarding my hip, I concluded that the surgeon who dislodged my labrum was likely quite practiced at suturing a labrum back in place with Iberian knots. He had performed the most hip arthroscopies of anyone else on the planet at that time. He successfully restored pain free range of motion in my hip that has seen me through additional births and the more than ten years so far of raising my children.

When I thought of the overall good that came from those two surgeries along with the “rays” that led me to those two people who performed the less common procedures, I felt grateful and my frustrations fled.

I want to continue to “consciously shift [my] focus and elevate [my] thoughts to the positive aspects of challenges.” As I notice light and shadows throughout my day, I can remember that they both hold beauty and adjust the lense of my perception for how I want to view my reality.

My question:
What helps you focus on the positive?