While attending BYU-Idaho, my Foundations of Education professor had a unique approach to how he presented tests. Acknowledging that many people felt anxiety around testing, sometimes even debilitating anxiety, he realized that simply changing the language he used when referring to tests had a significant effect on his students. So, instead of taking tests in the Testing Centre, we got to have opportunities in the Opportunity Centre (although he did apologize that the Opportunity Centre was still mislabeled as the Testing Centre). As students, we were being given the opportunity to demonstrate what we had learned, how we could apply that new knowledge to our futures as educators, and even to alert our professor to areas in his course that were not as clear as we needed them to be. Our professor wasn't looking for a chance to judge or mock us for what we didn't understand or hadn't devoted enough time to adequately learn. He used our opportunities as his own opportunity to evaluate our progress and the changing and continuing needs that we each had. While I tend to be a good test-taker and I learn rather easily, I appreciated his efforts to alleviate the nerves that many students experience around test-taking as well as giving us, as future teachers, another tool to use in our own classrooms to decrease our students' worries over testing.
Every so often in my life since I graduated, I have thought about "opportunities" and how changing the language we use can dramatically alter the way we think and feel about things. I have used that principle many times as a mother and just in my conversations with the people in my life. And while "opportunities" remained in my mind as a reference point, I didn't really feel any further connection to the concept of tests being opportunities...until a few months ago.
Lately, I have been trying to understand why certain righteous desires of mine are still withheld and why I have been called upon to endure certain trials. In considering these concerns, I have had my mind and heart opened to some truths (that I will share in another post) and have decided to change the language I use when thinking or talking about those trials. Instead of viewing them as tests, I am choosing to see them as opportunities. Opportunities to reevaluate my priorities. Opportunities to consider whose will I am pursuing. Opportunities to strip away the elements in my life that no longer (or never did) serve me in my efforts to walk a covenant path. And, in so doing, I have realized more fully that the Lord, like my professor, isn't looking for a chance to judge me for what I don't yet understand or haven't devoted enough time to adequately learn. He isn't burdening me with trials to show me how lacking I am or to say "I told you so" when my decisions to follow my will before I follow His will find me struggling even more. The Lord is truly FOR me. He loves me enough to offer me opportunities to unburden myself from the problems, worries, and distractions that weigh me down and slow my progression. He can, and will, consecrate every trial and pain and difficulty for my good and gain and growth...if I let Him. And changing the way I talk and think about the opportunities He offers me has been a precious insight and tender blessing. Instead of shrinking away from perceived trials, lately I find myself trying to lean into the opportunity to be refined. I am certainly not yet to the level of faith where I am actively seeking those refining experiences, but I am feeling more gratitude for them when they come...for what my Father in Heaven is doing FOR me, not doing to me, in providing opportunities.
