Saturday, April 14, 2012

Spirit of Courage

So, I mentioned earlier that I suffer from a touch of anxiety.  I also mentioned that I was in Relief Society at church in Texas when I felt like the lesson had a part that was just for me.  It was just a blurb at the end of the lesson, but it spoke to my heart.

I promise you that if you will respond to the invitation to share your beliefs and feelings about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, a spirit of love and a spirit of courage will be your constant companion, for “perfect love casteth out fear” (1 John 4:18).

Elder L.Tom Perry gave a talk during the October conference in 2011 titled "Perfect Love Casteth Out Fear".  So, there you have it, the way to overcome my anxiety and get rid of my fears.  Okay, so life really isn't that easy, is it.  I've often wondered what it is that I want this blog to be.  I have a separate blog where I share funny stories and pictures of my kids.  I started this one as a place to share my thoughts that I didn't want to share on the family blog.  I know a lot of people who read both.  I enjoy reading craft blogs and cooking blogs.  I like reading about other moms who homeschool.  There are a number of blogs that I read that talk more specifically about their faith.  For some reason I don't feel like I've done that much on my blog despite my faith being a huge part of my life.

Maybe I'm afraid.  Not only am I afraid of what people I see might think of me, I'm afraid that my huge audience of readers (that's like 5 of you) might be offended by something I write, and then nobody will want to read my blog.  Isn't that silly?  I started this as a way to write down my thoughts, but not necessarily for anyone but me to read, and now I'm concerned what someone I don't even see will think.

I have a friend right now who has a lot of questions about God and about my beliefs.  I try to share and answer her questions as best I can, but I don't always get the words out so that she can understand.  I try, but my heart and my mouth don't always connect they way they should.  If only my heart could communicate with my brain, and then my brain could communicate with my mouth, but that takes longer sometimes.  I like to think things through, and if I haven't thought it through then I can't always answer so that my answer is understood.  I'm going to keep trying, though.  I really want that spirit of courage.

1 comment:

Katrina Wilson said...

So I completely encourage your speaking out about your faith. Our stake president has really pushed missionary work lately and our bishop said something very interesting in our last ward conference that has really stuck with me. He gave the story of a man wanted to be more physically strong so he asked the Lord to help him be stronger physically so the Lord told him to go and push on a rock. After about 3 weeks of the man going and pushing this rock all day long he was getting frusterated because he had no progress so he went back to the Lord and said, I've been doing this for 3 weeks and I haven't moved it at all. What he didn't noticed was how his muscles had grown and he was much stronger physically. Then our bishop mentioned that as long as we are talking to everyone about the gospel even if we aren't making any progress we are increasing ourselves! It was very interesting. This may be what everyone in our stake needs to be doing right now to increase theirselves instead of just bringing more people into the gospel.