E means Example

I was really struggling with a topic to write for e.  I want my journey through the alphabet to be true to who I am and what I think without coming up with some quickly thought out post so I spent my thursday and friday thinking about it.  Finally after all the e words that popped into my head from easter, excitement, to experience, I chose the word example.

I have come to learn more and more that as followers of Christ we really need to establish the thought of they will be done.  Not my will be done but thy will.  Lately I was listening to a talk by John Bytheway who talks about how many people cry out "we want choice, choice, choice! but are not willing to live with the consequences they are given for the choices they make."  I have realized that ever choice made comes with a consequence and shapes who we come to be on a daily basis.  In thinking about this I started to think about how my choices will set the example of who I am as a daughter, wife, mother, friend, Latter Day Saint, and so on.  And so I started to think of all the people I look to as examples in my life.

A lot of my examples are ones who I rarely know but have touched my heart because they are men called of God.  I love each and everyone of the apostles and the simple messages they teach of Christ and the testimonies they bear through their examples of faith and devotion through the endless service they give.  President Thomas S Monson is another one of my examples of the type of person I want to be.  He truly is an exemplar of Christ always willing to show the attitude of thy will be done first rather than his own.

When I have to pick people who I know personally one person other than my dear momma that sticks out to me is the unshakeable faith that my friend Safire has in the Lord.  She has come to truly know the struggles and pitfalls of life. She knows what a dark hour looks like and what it needs to take to align her will with the Lord's.  She always helps bring my focus back to the Saviour and to truly put my faith and trust in him when I am learning the way to fulfill my role as a wife, soon to be mother, and woman of Christ.

After reading my quote at the top it really put things into perspective for me.  Ever since I was little I have always wanted to be perfect and never make a mistake.  It was a painful unrealistic perception I took upon myself because in order to be perfect we have to go through challenges, struggles, lessons and tests where sometimes we have fallen to learn the lesson and be moulded by the creator's hands to have perfection come to us.

I tear up a lot when I look back on just the last couple years of my life and how hard things were and how much I have learned.  I have come to know suffering, struggle, and defeat where it would have been so much easier to just throw the towel in and admit I could no longer go on.  But I see now slowly who the Lord is wanting me to become.  I am not there yet but I am starting to learn just how important patience, love, mercy, forgiveness, and acceptance really are.  And every time I have an encounter with a lesson I know is working on these qualities I become ever more grateful for the numerous examples I have to be a little bit more like the Saviour.