Stronger

What if trials are less about surviving and more about becoming stronger?

This week, Candice and Clare discuss the parallels between strength training and spiritual growth, from muscle fatigue and recovery to enduring hardship with faith in Christ. They share personal stories, conference insights, gym insecurities, and the comforting idea that growth often comes through resistance. A thoughtful conversation about joy, struggle, friendship, and trusting God through difficult seasons.

Sisters with Latter-Day Voices website

Transcript

Stronger by Michael J. Gross

Jeffrey R. Holland quote

David Bednar quote

Dallin H. Oaks quote

Fair Use & Disclaimer

This podcast may include brief quotes from outside sources used for discussion, education, and commentary under fair use. These are shared respectfully, with context and attribution, and are not used for commercial gain. The views expressed are our own and based on personal experiences. We are not officially affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but we strive to share thoughtful, respectful, and faith-centered conversations.  

Transcript

strength training

Clare: Okay. Welcome to Sisters Latter-day Voices. I’m Clare.

Candice: And I’m Candice, and we have a little mini episode for you today. But before we start the mini episode, we are planning on taking a break in the summer because we are moms, our kids will be out of school, and it’s busy.

Clare: We want—

Candice: And—

Clare: To party with them.

Candice: Yeah, and we’re doing this for free, okay people? So give us a break. We’re both starting to get busier in our lives as well. So Clare is going back to school for nursing, I started a part-time job, and eventually I’m going to need a full-time job.

Clare: Well, I haven’t gotten into nursing yet, so who knows?

Candice: I know, but you’re taking classes and going back to school.

Clare: Yes, so true.

Candice: That’s the plan anyway. You’re still going to school and being a mom. So if you are enjoying the podcast and you want us to keep going, please leave us a review just so we know you’re listening.

Clare: So—

Candice: That would be great.

Okay, so now into the episode. I want to talk about strength training and how it applies to trials. And it’s funny that I’m talking about strength training because I honestly know very little about it. But I am reading a book called Stronger, and it’s about the history of strength training. It’s kind of a random read for me, but it’s educating.

Clare: Is this the one Dad really liked?

Candice: Yeah. He recommended it.

Clare: Okay, I haven’t read it yet.

Candice: It really goes into depth about the history of what people believed about gaining muscles. I’m about halfway through.

But anyway, I know people have applied the idea of strengthening your faith to strengthening muscles, but as I was reading it, it made me think about trials and how it applies to enduring to the end, and what it means to endure to the end.

One of the concepts that I learned is the “super compensation effect,” which is the process of building muscle, and it has four stages:

1. Training
2. Fatigue
3. Recovery
4. Super compensation

So for step one, training, that’s about stress. It’s doing more than you are used to. You are adding stress to the muscles, doing something that is difficult.

Step two is fatigue. It’s a performance dip. You’ve stressed out your muscles and now you’re tired.

Then comes step three, which is recovery, when you are resting and your muscles are repairing themselves.

And the final step, step four, is super compensation. That’s when you now have a newer, higher baseline because you are stronger than you were before.

So I was thinking about this in a spiritual light, and something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is enduring to the end and what it means to endure to the end. I think it might mean something different than I originally thought, or maybe just how I applied it to my life is different.

So let’s go over these stages of building muscle, the super compensation effect, through the lens of trials.

So the first stage is training, or stress. Hopefully I’m not the only person who has gone through a trial and thought, “Why do I have to do this? I don’t want to do this.” And sometimes it’s difficult to see any benefit to going through a trial other than, well, now I can have better empathy for people who are going through something similar.

It can be difficult to stay positive during a challenge, but it’s clear when reading the scriptures and learning about the gospel and the plan of salvation that we are all being challenged, and life was designed that way. We are meant to do difficult things.

Clare: Honestly, that is really reassuring. It really is, to be honest.

And I think that’s one of my favorite parts about the scriptures, especially in the New Testament, Jesus’s life. He’s Jesus, and He went through so many trials. I think, okay, if He can do it, I can do it. And He’s there to help me, but I can do it because He did it.

Candice: Yeah. He had to do so much more than I have to do, so I can handle this tiny little thing compared to what He had to do. His whole life, He was literally born in a manger. He was constantly dealing with something.

Anyway, so step two is fatigue, which is a performance dip. You’ve worked your muscles and you are tired. Then naturally comes step three, which is recovery, and this is when the muscles repair.

I think this is a gift because even when a trial is ongoing, there are some days or moments that are more difficult than others, but it only feels that heavy for a moment.

Even when a trial is lasting for years, there might be some lighter times when it doesn’t feel so challenging. We aren’t meant to push through things constantly. Every week we have a day of rest. We have the Sabbath.

I think we need mental rest sometimes from our worries and struggles, and that rest will probably look different for different people. For me, I think exercise or reading a book are good ways to take my mind off something that is troubling me.

And it’s nice that we don’t just have the rain coming constantly, even if it is a long-lasting trial.

Clare: Yeah.

Candice: And then step four, which is just comforting and motivating, is super compensation. This is when you come back to lift some more weight. You’ve already rested. You’re coming back to do it again, but now you can do more than you could before. You can add more weight and you can handle it because you’re stronger.

In my life, I’ve had thoughts looking at someone else’s life thinking, “Oh, I could never do that.” And then later on in my life, I have to go through a similar experience. Even though it isn’t fun, I’m stronger because of it.

Clare: I also think a lot of people, myself included, don’t give themselves enough credit. They look at other people’s trials and think, “Oh my gosh, I could never do that.” Then you go through something incredibly hard and difficult and you realize, okay, yes, there have been good and bad days, but you can do it. You’re stronger when you are put in that position or situation.

Candice: Yeah, you can do more than you think you can.

Clare: Exactly. Even coming back to weights, Darren was like, “Let’s try this.” I’m not very good about weightlifting, and I literally just started. I’m on week two and I’m doing terrible.

But anyway, it was an incline bench press, and I could only do the bar, which is so embarrassing because there’s no weight on it and it’s forty-five pounds.

Then Darren couldn’t go because he was sick, and I thought, okay, I’m going to go into the scary section of the gym by myself. I pumped myself up and thought, “What if I can’t lift just the bar off my chest?”

Then I did the first set and realized I could do this. So I thought I needed to look somewhat cooler, so I grabbed the two-and-a-half pound weights and put them on each side of the bar. I was like, okay, I got this.

Candice: I love it. See? You could already do a little bit more than you did before.

Clare: Exactly. Yes.

Candice: It’s funny because it really is a scary section of the gym. I like going to classes because doing stuff by myself intimidates me. There always seem to be serious lifters.

Clare: Yeah, it’s hard. And then you just have to think, no one cares. Like, who cares?

Candice: It’s true.

Clare: Even if the bar did fall on me, someone would help me. They might laugh in their head, but anyway.

Candice: Speaking of laughing, this isn’t about weight training, but at the gym I tried the cold plunge with my friend last week. There’s the pool area, a hot tub, and right next to it is the cold tub.

Clare: There’s a cold plunge at your gym?

Candice: Yeah. So we were like, let’s try it. You know me, I hate being cold. She really wanted to do it though, so we went in and I literally lasted ten seconds. I was like, “Oh, I can’t do it.”

I tried again and thought, “I can’t do it.” I hopped out, but she sat in there for three minutes straight. There were some young guys in the hot tub just laughing at me. I’m like, “I see you. I’m sorry.”

Clare: Hey, but next time maybe you can do twelve seconds.

Candice: I don’t think there’s going to be a next time. I really don’t like being cold.

Clare: It might not be your thing.

Candice: I’ll just cheer her on if she goes again.

Clare: Hey, that works too.

Candice: Anyway, there’s a quote from the book about this weightlifting experience that I really liked. It says:

“That’s a way to articulate this participation in the unknown, that feeling of knowing where your limit is and testing just below it to the point of sheer exhaustion, then recovering and then feeling like you are unstoppable. Where did this strength come from? It’s not from my willpower. It’s not me saying I’m going to lift this weight. No, my body just reacted and I’ve got this power right now, this strength that feels like it’s coming from an external source.”

And spiritually, I can see the analogy with that. We are stronger after we go through trials.

One of the concepts the book talks about is that strength is tension, and building strength is cyclical. We’re going to keep going through these things that help us grow and make us stronger.

And Jeffrey R. Holland gave a conference talk that I really liked during COVID called Waiting on the Lord. He was addressing people who were in the middle of hardship and seeking relief, not just related to COVID, but anybody dealing with trials.

He talked about faith and how we need to trust God in good times and bad times. He spoke about how we need suffering because without it, we would not be able to truly come to Christ.

He quotes Neal A. Maxwell, and I’m going to quote it too because this honestly changed the way I’ve been looking at my own trials:

“One’s life cannot be both faith-filled and stress-free. It simply will not work to glide naively through life, saying as we sip another glass of lemonade, ‘Lord, give me all Thy choices virtues, but be certain not to give me grief, nor sorrow, nor pain, nor opposition. Please do not let anyone dislike me or betray me. And above all, do not ever let me feel forsaken by Thee or those I love. In fact, Lord, be careful to keep me from all the experiences that made Thee divine. And then, when the rough sledding by everyone else is over, please let me come and dwell with Thee where I can boast about how similar our strengths and our characters are, as I float along on my cloud of comfortable Christianity.’”

I love this because it helps me see my trials as a gift to strengthen me and not just something to endure. It’s helped me see joy in trials.

And this is just a side note, but several years ago in an interview with Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard, the interviewer had heard that she and her husband had gone to couples therapy before they got married and thought that was funny and was asking her about it.

She said they have a great marriage, and Kristen said, “Well, we earned each other.” They worked really hard on their relationship before they got married, and since they’ve been married they continue to work on it.

Dax is very open about being an alcoholic. He’s been sober for twenty years and talks about it on his podcast. They’ve gone through difficult things.

But I like the idea that they earned a good marriage because they both keep working at it.

Lately, I feel like I’ve been able to feel peace in my life that is different than what I’ve felt before. It’s not constant. I’m not just happy all the time. I still very much have challenges, but I’ve felt peace knowing that challenges are a gift and that I’m growing because of them.

So I’m going to end with a quote from David A. Bednar, who talked about enduring to the end in this latest conference:

“Enduring to the end is linked inextricably to the spiritual gift of charity. Enduring to the end is not merely a relentless determination to grit our teeth, hold on to the limits of our physical strength and mental capacity, and push through the challenges and adversities of mortal life. It is so much more than that. Enduring to the end is the joyous quest of a lifetime, a pressing forward with faith in Jesus Christ, in a gradual process of trusting in and receiving help from our Savior to become more like Him. As our love for Him grows ever stronger and deeper, we can be blessed to receive spiritual perspective, the Lord’s empowering grace, and exceedingly great and indescribable joy.”

Clare: This just makes me think that we go through hard things, but we also experience joy. One of the beauties about being here is our agency, but also being here with other mortals and surrounding ourselves with people who can help us through the joys and trials of life.

Because yes, scriptures are amazing and trying to emulate the Savior’s life is amazing, but it’s also great to have people around you that you can call if you’re having a good day or a bad day, or if you’re losing it, or bawling, or if your kids are driving you crazy. But other times they’re so sweet and you just want to kiss them to death.

I think that’s part of the beauty of this world. Yes, we go through a lot, but we get so much joy out of it too, which helps with the hard times.

Candice: Yeah, that’s a good point. We don’t have to go through anything alone.

Clare: And I think that’s also like weight training. It strengthens us. Hopefully we can see that in others and think, “Wow, I want to be able to be that person for someone else.”

Candice: Yeah. Good point. I like that.

Clare: It’s probably because you’re my person. I’m always like, “Oh my gosh.”

Candice: I know. If I’m going to call crying to anybody, it’s going to be you.

Clare: Yeah. We’ve got each other. If I call twice, you better answer the phone.

Candice: I know it’s true. If you keep calling, I’ve got to answer it.

Clare: Or I’ll just keep calling. That works too.

Candice: So funny.

Clare: But we hope you guys have a great summer, and we hope you know that God loves you.

Candice: Bye.

Clare: Bye.