Wading Through Winter

I have lived in Arizona of my life.  In Arizona (at least the desert parts) we don't really have a real winter season.  Sure it exists from December 21 to March 21, but really, its just a break from the hot weather.  Back home the winter averages about 52° and often consists of shorts and t-shirts.  Its far different from a winter in Upstate New York. 
I spent the last winter in Rochester and now I know what a real winter is like.  I went 19 years without having to deal with snow and plows and sliding off the road and ice and blizzards, (127" this last year).  But since I have experienced a true winter, I can now really appreciate the spring.  Now, I am so grateful for the spring; for the traction on the road, for the green grass, for the "lack of 5 month old snow banks".  Only after I have suffered through a winter do I know how great the spring is.  A scripture that illustrates this point is in 2 Nephi 2:11 "For it must needs be that there is an opposition in all things."  If there is no happiness, then there is no misery.  If you've never been sad, then you don't know what it is like to have joy.  If you've never been sick, than you can't fully appreciate the blessing of health.  If you don't know the winter, than you can't really know the spring. 
So when people ask "why life has to be so hard?" or "why bad things happen to good people?", the answer is "so that you can know the spring".  I have never enjoyed springtime so much and it was only after working and wading through wearisome winter that I came to know the splendor spry of spring.  Likewise, its often that only after the trial and hardship, or the pain and the suffering, that we really come to know the spring in our lives.  Alma 7:12 reads "And he will take upon him death that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities."
Christ suffered through the worst of all winters so that he would know how to help us through ours.  He wants to help us, so when we meet rough winters, turn to Christ because he knows how to best endure it.  After all, he is pretty good at enduring. I end with the promise that no matter how cold, dismal, dark and dead the winter is, spring does inevitably come. Because of the winters in our lives, we will come to better know the spring.