You Are Extraordinary

C.S. Lewis once said, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”

I don't know what you are dealing with right now.  I don't know your worries.  Dreads.  Thoughts.  Heartaches.  I don't know what keeps you up at night.  I don't know what makes you laugh.  What you find joy in.  What tickles your fancy.  I don't know your struggles.  Your triumphs, your failures, and everything in between.

But I do know this: You are extraordinary.  You are amazing.  You have so many gifts and talents.  You have loved ones.  Dreams you wish to achieve.  Places you wish to see.  You have the power to make someone smile.  Bring someone happiness.  You are of infinite worth and potential. 

“The same God that placed that star in a precise orbit millennia before it appeared over Bethlehem in celebration of the birth of the Babe has given at least equal attention to placement of each of us in precise human orbits so that we may, if we will, illuminate the landscape of our individual lives, so that our light may not only lead others but warm them as well.”  ~ Neal A. Maxwell

 

Believe In Yourself and Your Possibilities

"It is extremely important for you to believe in yourselves, not only for what you are now, but for what you have the power to become."

~ Neal A. Maxwell

"Sometimes the Only Way To Go is Through"

(Santa Barbara last week.  I miss it already.)

"Do not let your moods maul your faith. . . . Do not let a bad day cause you to think that life is bad. Do not let low self-esteem discount your high blessings. In short, do not homogenize your hopes by mixing and treating them as if all hopes and aspirations are equal. They are not. The hope for a resurrection is guaranteed unconditionally by the Atonement of the Savior. . . .

"Our transitory disappointments are real, but the missing letter from home is not really comparable to the delivered message from heaven, the good news of the gospel. Today’s unmet hunger for a few more friends must not be allowed to obscure the marvelous reality of the forever friendship of Jesus for each of us. Do not let uncertainty about how others seem to feel about you this week get in the way of how God has always felt about you.

"Our intertwining insecurities, the hunger for peer reassurance, and the tendency to be carried on the tides of today’s troubles and disappointments will diminish as we mature. As our understanding of the gospel deepens, it becomes ever more clear that proximate problems need not, and must not, undercut ultimate realities. Thus, as we confront problems which we might shiveringly sidestep, if we could, let us realize, as one poet did, that 'sometimes the only way to go is through.' We go on that journey with justified hopes to help our hunger and with realities to reassure us. And, in the midst of our transitory troubles, we have the knowledge that He is near at hand, and within us there is even the sense that in the dim past we agreed to all this and that now we must perform on that pledge."

—Neal A. Maxwell, All Hell Is Moved