Sheila read my last entry last night, but I was already asleep when she came up.  But for my sake she remembered the thought and told me this morning just before she was off to work.  I had been going off about some things that happened that I found disconcerting.  What she said to me came light a lightning bolt and really has had me thinking all day in a much clearer way.  She simple told me that the things that I was complaining about came about because I asked for them.  I knew that I hadn't specifically asked for those problems, but she was right that I had asked for something that I now see very well has been answered with what has taken place.  It certainly was not what I had in mind.  But you know the saying about asking for something and we are given a circumstance wherein we can achieve that which we asked for.  I'm not sure about all the specifics and maybe it isn't exactly anything.  But I do see a test that can give me what I was looking for albeit not in the way that I imagined.  So today I have had  moments where I felt quite positive about our situation, yet I  have also had moments where it weighed on me something terrible.  I keep thinking about "my Eliza R. Snow song: 'Think not when you gather to Zion' " and its 'refining furnace'.  I just hadn't had quite that pointed of a lesson on the 'heat' of that furnace. I find the process more painful then I thought, and in a much more real way then I figured.  So today I have been in and out and up and down and I understand the 'opposition in all things' in a much more real way then I have before.  'No pain, no gain' is a much more universal truth then I knew.  I begin to understand more how some just throw in the towel and quit, but I also see the test of it all and look on the other side:  Start where you are--use what you have--Do what you can.  That is my new slogan for the day.