Sam and I have been reading a book together whose premise is "Marriage is a people-growing process." In other words, don't expect it to be comfortable and easy all the time. That is not its purpose. Its purpose is to challenge you to grow up, to progress, to become your best self. The author goes on to explain that in order to be flexible enough in marriage to respond to its demands and founded enough to move forward, we need (among other things) a solid (but flexible) sense of self.
As I have been reading and pondering how this applies to me, and as I have been evaluating my feelings and actions, particularly those that are not what I would like them to be, it has occurred to me that I do not have a solid sense of myself. I've needed to redefine myself several times throughout my life, because of both internal and external changes which deconstructed crucial elements of what I defined as "me."
I fasted yesterday for help in this process, and had some good direction: 1) my patriarchal blessing is full of the Lord's perspective about who I am; 2) the scriptures and hymns that a was presented with yesterday reminded me that I need to become more and more like the Savior; 3) I need to get a sense of myself that is not dependent on external circumstances, like being a student, a mother, a wife, or an employee, but is eternal and clarifies what I bring to each of those rolls.
Well, two weeks have passed sinse I wrote the above. I have continued to think about who I am, and what I have to contribute. In church today, the Sunday School lesson was about the temple and one of the scriptures that was shared was D&C 97:14, about how the temple is a place where we can go to understand our ministry. The questions was asked "What is your ministry?" In part, the answer to that is the external rolls I mentioned before, of mother, wife, student, also in my callings, etc. I also felt, however, that gaining a vision of my ministry would help me, because I am not simply "a mother," I am mother Julia. So having a sense of myself will synthesize with my understanding of my ministries to guide me on my way and give me a grounded place from which to work.
Who am I and what am I to do?
Here are some of the answers I've gotten:
-I am tender and gentle, and in that gentleness, I can have great power to influence, bless and lift others.
-I am visionary--I see patterns in everything around me that leads me to truth
-I have great desires for good, and love what is holy and eternal
-I have felt the Spirit of Elijah and I take great joy in family history work
-I am chaste
-I am willing to endure hardships
-I have faith in God and His son, Jesus Christ, as my Savior
-I love to teach and share the truths that I have
I hope for more to come soon!
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By the way, I've been meaning to comment on this post for over a month now. After I read it, I thought about all of the qualities that you have epitomized in our friendship. Some of these are repetitions of what you have above, but they include some of what you are to me:
ReplyDelete--You value people and relationships. You prioritize spending time with them and having meaningful conversations.
--You love the scriptures and relish the poetry and truthfulness of them.
--You love beauty in all its forms, and you love expressing it--through dance, through writing, through experiencing it in nature. I was visiting you over a Sunday that you and Sam gave talks, and Sam described you as a "lover of all things beautiful." As usual, he displays his knowledge of his wife.
--You don't suffer fools gladly (although you constantly check yourself when those fools are, for example, your friends or relatives :). I'm thinking of what a clear voice of reason you were to me throughout the entire ordeal of having a crush on Chris and dealing with all of the drama of that unhealthy relationship. You also had the same impatience with vague (or overt!) philosophical flirtations with relativism or outright nihilism, which we occasionally encountered in the classes we took, both together and separately.
There were more that I thought of, but those are the only ones coming to mind right now. In any event, those are some of the things that you have always been to me.