Lemons or Lemonade?

Sometimes in life I just feel like ripping my hair out & asking 'God, why?' The past little bit has been one of those times for me. Family struggles, trouble with my sister and her husband, financial problems for Nathan and I... the list goes on and on. On Friday night I came home, exhausted from one of the longest weeks ever, to find Kiska missing. Now most of you know, I would no sooner loose my dog than cut off my right arm. I was in a panic & kept praying to God that he would return her to me, unharmed. Nathan & I ran up and down the neighborhood yelling, probably annoying all the neighbours, until about 11:30pm when I realized that it was a lost cause. I had to go into my other job at 6:00 am (by the way I got dragged by my horse that day) and needed some sleep. I prayed that night and told God that I really needed her still, so please bring her back. In the morning I jumped out of bed, ran to the front door, & opened it, expecting to see a really tired but happy Kiska. No such luck. I closed the door & was about to start crying when guess what? My sweet 'little' dog pushed the door open & came running over to me, tail wagging. I was so happy I ran into our room yelling, 'she's back, she's back' and promptly jumped onto the bed with her. We all had a cuddly family moment where I told her, under no circumstances, that she was aloud to ever do that again.
Yesterday, Nathan, my sister and I all went to my parents stake conference because President Henry B. Erying was coming to speak. He spoke on trials and how sometimes God takes them away and sometimes he doesn't. God gives us trials because those are the times when we change and become more like him. He said that even though they are hard, if we didn't have them we couldn't come to live with our father in the end. We wouldn't have ensued enough things like long suffering, compassion, faith and all of the other things we need to have. We wouldn't be enough like God without them. We need to say 'Thy will be done Lord' and mean it, even when it is hard. If we show enough faith and enough Christ-like attributes then when the day comes we will rise on the morning and he will say, 'Well done thou good and faithful return to my rest.'
So, I will have trials and they will be hard. But, with God's help, I can get through them and I can become more like him for it. I hope I can always turn my lemons into lemonade.