All Things Are Possible to Him That Believeth

I had the most enlightening experience .

There is this thing that I do on ocassion that I have almost always hated. At first I thought it was a cool thing to do and in a way it was once gratifying I guess. But it has long since lost it's appeal and yet from time to time I still indulge myself in my past stupidity. Said stupidity used to be more frequent, but that frequency began to diminish as I continued to hate it. Now, I rarely do it, but it still bothers me profusely when I do. Like today. For years (yup, years) I keep saying to myself, "Oh well, this isn't going to change. It won't kill me by being stupid once in a while. And God isn't listening to me when I pray to get past this, so obviously it's not that big of a deal anyway." So basically, I have just prayed to God and expected Him to do the rest regardless. Or I would expect Doug to always say, "Don't do that, Heather!" when he was here. It was never about my will power; as you can see, I had none to speak of since I've given up so easily after all these years. I had thought that everything depended on others-my parents to teach me better, my siblings to treat me better, Doug to tell me no, Christ to just take this annoyance away. But I figured out today that it isn't any of that.

I was reading in the book "Broken Things to Mend" by Jeffrey R. Holland when I stumbled upon a scripture story and Elder Holland retells it with his own commentary. We've all heard the story: A father with an afflicted child first comes to the disciples, having a small amount of hope and faith that they can help. However, they could not provide the help needed and a shouting match is started amongst the disciples. This is when Christ walks onto the scene. The father then turns to Christ and with a weary, last resort kind of tone says:
"If thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us.
"Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.
"And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief" (Mark 9:14-24).

Elder Holland then adds his own remarks, which is what struck me. "Only now, in this exchange, does he [the father] grasp that a great deal of the answer to his quest rests upon his own shoulders, or, more accurately, in his own soul." It is not what the world will do for us, it is what we will do for ourselves! I hadn't thought, for some reason, that it is my own faith that determines whether or not Christ can help me. No matter how big, small, or insignificant the thing may be. Obviously I will never get entirely past this pet peeve of mine that I inherenetly hate if I don't have the faith I can do it. If I claim it is never going to change, then it never will. If I lack the faith and hope, then what cause does God or Christ have to do it? I have to have faith, I have to believe for things to happen. Inside, I guess I've aways known that, but it was never plainly stated to me quite like it was here by Elder Holland.

"All things are possible to him that believeth."
From now on, I will believe.

The Spirit of Charity

I had an amazing experience today, brought to me by my dad.

Somehow, I never noticed it before, but my dad is one of the most charitable people I've ever met. It's not the kind of charity that people normally think of; give large sums of money to some charity fund, or gives a whole bunch of clothes and shoes to some African fund. But my dad showed me and my whole family the perfect way to show charity toward a single person.

For Thanksgiving today, my dad invited a man over. Every morning, he works out with him for medical reasons. No one else in my family had ever seen or met him before, but my dad asked him to come over to my house for Thanksgiving dinner because he didn't have anywhere to go to celebrate.

This man has disabilities caused my an insane car wreck over 20 years ago that messed up the entire left side of his body. The functionality of his left arm isn't much and he has a constant limp. He had to learn how to do everything over again, as if he were growing up from being a baby. Walk, feed himself, talk... all of it. But now he does them all pretty well.

I got the chance to talk to him for about an hour while he was here. And I had such a wonderful experience. He is a smart man, even if hard of hearing from his accident. He is talkative and asks so many questions and honestly wants answers. And I enjoyed myself so much.

I hope we all can be more charitable toward one another and more willing to get to know others. You may be surprised by the things you find out, and the awesomeness that is meeting new people.

Worth More Than Rubies

For some reason, women as a whole have this thought that they aren't worth much. I mean, I know that I for one have thought/expressed this view on more than one occasion and I'm sure that most if not all women have felt that way. But why? Do we honestly not realize how much we are worth, how great we really are? Here's what Elder Scott had to say about it:

"So many of our sisters are disheartened, even discouraged, and disillusioned. Others are in serious trouble because of the choices they make. Satan has unleashed a seductive campaign to undermine the sanctity of womanhood, to deceive the daughters of God and divert them from their divine destiny. He well knows women are the compassionate, self-sacrificing, loving power that binds together the human family. He would focus their interests solely on their physical attributes and rob them of their exalting roles as wives and mothers."

We are divine. Do we understand that? My view on that is that we don't get it, not anything close to enough, but I want us to. I want us all to realize what we're worth, especially the women in our lives. All of us are worth something incredible, worth more than rubies. And we are divine.

To Struggle Through Prayer

Prayer is one of the fundamental parts of the gospel; it is a primary answer to all of our problems and is one of the few things that can ensure we are blessed by asking our Father for those blessings. Over the last couple of months however, my faith in prayer has been tried, as they were for the Nephites in Alma 58:7 and 10: “And it came to pass that we did wait in these difficult circumstances for the space of many months, even until we were about to perish… Therefore we did pour out our souls in prayer to God, that he would strengthen us and deliver us out of the hands of our enemies."
My enemies aren't physical as the Lamanites were for the Nephites, but my enemies are very strong. Mentally, I have a tendency to beat myself up. I don't think I'm good at anything, that I am at all attractive, that I really have much to give the world, although I try as best I can. And as such, I have little confidence in not only myself, but God as well sometimes. I'm not perfect, and I'm not going to act as though I have a perfect faith in my Father, because I don't. I've always struggled with that. And because of this lack of self confidence, I never know when or even if my prayers are being answered. Which brings me to my problem.
I've been prayer for months about what I should major in. Once upon a time I thought that Psychology was for me, and I pursued it. I've done well, my best classes this semester, but I still felt like something was missing. And that's when I felt like majoring in Photography would be really good for me. The problem, though, was whether or not I would even get in. The acceptance rate for the application and portfolio into the Photography major is 25-30%. In case you didn't know, that's really,really small. But praying hasn't really seemed to help me at all. Honestly, I feel... ignored.
I know, that's horrible. But I just can't help it. Or couldn't anyway. That was until I read a talk by Elder Scott from May 2007 that my missionary suggested to me. "He [the Lord] will always hear your prayers and will invariably answer them. However, His answers will seldom come while you are on your knees praying, even when you may plead for an immediate response. Rather, He will prompt you in quiet moments when the Spirit can most effectively touch your mind and heart. Hence, you should find periods of quiet time to recognize when you are being instructed and strengthened." I'm not being ignored. In a lot of ways, I'm shocked I ever let that thought even toy around in my mind. But even so, I was very annoyed that I was still struggling with receiving an answer from God. And that's when I read the next part of the talk that made everything make sense. "Be thankful that sometimes God lets you struggle for a long time before that answer comes. Your character will grow; your faith will increase."
So really, it's all about my faith being increased. I'm not being ignored by God. He's not doing it to frustrate me or tick me off. He's trusting me, even if I don't trust myself entirely. "When you are living righteously and are acting with trust, God will not let you proceed too far without a warning impression if you have made the wrong decision."
I have never been more grateful for God and His constantly being there for me, listening to me and helping me.

Re·mem·ber, I Am Mindful of You Always

[RI-MEM-BER] V. TO RECALL TO THE MIND BY AN ACT OR EFFORT OF MEMORY; THINK OF AGAIN; TO RETAIN IN THE MEMORY; KEEP IN MIND; REMAIN AWARE OF.

This might be one of the most important words in the English language. I never realized it much before until a few months ago, but so much depends upon us remembering.

I've always been told I have such a crazy awesome memory, but honestly, that's not entirely true. Sure, I could tell you the day, up to the hour even, of when I had my first kiss. And all right, it's a rare thing for me to forget when it's someone's birthday. But a lot of the time, I forget the important things. The things that really matter. Trivial matters such as song lyrics, birthdays and random facts, sure; I'm full of them. But the things that honestly matter, I always seem to forget.

Take, for example, all my dreams and aspirations. I want to be a writer. I want to be a photographer. In fact, I want to major in photography with a minor in psychology. I want to teach seminary. I want to make a difference in the world, in the lives of others, particularly those whom I love most dearly. I want to be a mother of at least 5 amazing kids. I want to be the best I can be. I want to go to the temple and marry the man of my dreams. I want to be with Doug forever. I want to live with God again.

But somehow, these things get pushed back all the time. I don't remember any of these goals, and instead of working on them, I sit on facebook, playing Bejeweled Blitz, stalking other people's pages and being a creep. I spend hours reading pointless fanfiction that is basically babble and not even worth anyone's time. But occasionally I do something productive and write something of my own, or read a General Conference talk, I guess I could even consider creating this blog something worthwhile. Most of the time though I do nothing to achieve any of them. Why? Because I just... don't keep it in mind. I don't make the effort to think of it again.

Another point I never seem to remember; who I am. Now I know, that seems like it shouldn't be a hard one to remember, right? But I'm not talking about the fact that I'm half Norwegian, an eighth German, a sixteenth Swedish and so on. I mean it's kinda hard to forget some of those things unless I get a concussion. But I'm referring to inside, who I am. Not where my physical appearances came from, but my spirit. Being the teenage girl that I am, I have a tendency to forget that I am pretty darn awesome. Honestly. Ask God, He'll tell you. Granted, I have a hard time believing in that, but it's true nonetheless. Why? Because I am a daughter of God. Literally. And really, I think that's pretty darn awesome indeed. But I never seem to keep that in mind. I don't remember it. I push it back, just like my dreams, and don't work any magic with that knowledge.

The last thing I want to say is about remembering about those who care about and love you. For some reason, I still get the feeling that people don't really care about me a lot of the time. I think that at some point, that's a pretty universal feeling. But someone very dear to me told me to read a scripture on one of those days. The scripture gave me the title to this blog, to help me and you remember we are loved by someone. "I am mindful of you always in my prayers, continually praying unto God the Father in the name of his Holy Child, Jesus, that he, through his infinite goodness and grace, will keep you through the endurance of faith on his name to the end." While this scripture is actually from Mormon to his son Moroni, we can also use this for anyone that is loved by us, or who we are loved by. My best friend gave this to me while I was having a hard time, and this scripture reminded me that I am something to him. He is mindful of me always, and I know that. He helped me remember that.

This why "remember" is such an important word. Think about it; how awesome could you be if you always remembered this simple thing-I am a child of God. God is my father. Literally. I can look up at the stars in the heavens and say, "My Daddy made that. I'm gonna be like Him one day." How different would we act, how many things would we do, if we remembered that simple thing alone? Or remembered that people truly do care about us, no matter how hopeless things may seem.

So I say to you, "Remember." Remember the things that matter most. Remember who you are. Remember who loves you and what you can become. Remember the feelings you've felt, the good times you've had. Remember the good times and learn from the bad.

"Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become your actions." Keep in mind the things that are most important to you, and you'll achieve all you want and much, much more with the help of our Father and his son, Jesus Christ.