Turning Negatives to Positives

Last month, at BYU graduation, President Worthen gave a great talk.  He told the backgrounds of how the letter y in our alphabet came to be and also how the Y on the mountain came to be.  The story of how the Y on the mountain came to be is a story of rival classes trying to outdo each other and then fatigue because the project they attempted was too big.  But Pres. Worthen said this:


"Symbols such as the letter y or the Y on Y Mountain ultimately gain meaning in our lives not so much because of their physical shape or presence but because of what we choose to make of them. Likewise, the meaning of events in our lives will be determined not so much by the events themselves but by how we choose to view and respond to them. And that in turn is shaped dramatically by the perspective from which we choose to view both the symbols and the events in our lives. "

Yesterday for Memorial Day, we did our traditional Hike to the Y

 I really like that idea.  We can choose to view things differently--turn negatives into positives. He also said that God can help us turn all things to our good. Here are a couple of examples from my own life:

Example 1:  Our last name "Bergeson" came from my husband's adoptive grandfather.  He was apparently not the most admirable of people and my husband's grandmother divorced him after about 9-10 years of marriage. My husband's father didn't like him and didn't stay in contact with him. And yet, there are a lot of people descended from my father-in-law with the last name of Bergeson, especially with all the boys in our family.  So what do we do with the fact that this name came from a guy we really don't know (not even what he looks like) and probably wouldn't admire if we did know him?  Maybe we can choose to view our last name as a symbol of the kind of people we aspire to be.  Maybe our last name can be associated with good and positive things as we give it a different meaning.

Here is a picture of my father-in-law meeting his birth father's family, perhaps for the first time in his late teens.  His birth father died in a logging accident while his mother was pregnant with him.

My father-in-law's mother--maybe the only picture we have of her.

Example 2:  A few years ago, our family hosted an exchange student.  To be completely honest, it was a very hard and humbling experience for me.  This young man was a fine young man and had no great flaws but the bottom line was that I simply had a hard time living with someone in my home for 9 months who was not my child or my spouse.  It always felt like there was a visitor in my home watching me and I didn't like that feeling.  Unfortunately, I'm pretty bad at keeping my feelings hidden so I'm sure he got that message while he lived here.  I have felt a lot of guilt about that--why couldn't I rise above that and be a more charitable person?

A picture from that year.

A few days ago, this young man came by our home for a brief visit.  While we were talking, he told me that there are two places in the world where he feels at home:  his hometown and Orem, Utah.  I was a little surprised and I quizzed him about some of his experiences here but he insisted that he only had positive feelings about living here that year.  That was actually a big relief to me.  How nice that despite my negative feelings towards him, he still views that time positively. I'm sure that many people he got to know here contributed to that feeling but I'm glad that his experience with me didn't ruin the whole year.  I'm really grateful that his memories are good and it helps me feel a lot less guilty.

This is a theme I want to remember in my life--there are so many ways we can take something that is negative for us and think of it positively.  And God can help us with that.