Free to choose faith

A few weeks ago, I was tasked with the pleasure of taking the LSAT (the law school admission test) and needless to say I was nervous. Granted, I had been preparing all summer for this.  For four months I had gone to classes, done homework, and taken countless practices tests; and yet I still was struggling to not sink into despair because I just couldn’t get some of the questions.

It was during this time that I was studying a talk given by Elder Jeffrey R Holland and he said something that completely blew my mind, making my fears seem so small:

“Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragement.” (originally said by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

It reminded me that even when something is hard; even when we are deeply troubled or worried about something – it never has to be discouraging. We choose how to respond, and in those troubling times, we are meant to respond faithfully and confidently, being “free to choose lierty and eternal life… or to choose captivity and death” (2 Ne. 2:27) and I, like Jacob, “would that ye should…be faithful… and choose eternal life,” (v. 28) remembering, even if you take the LSAT, that trouble has no necessary connection with despair.