06 May 2010

Epiphany

For those who are only interested in pictures on this blog: THERE ARE NO PICTURES IN THIS POST. :) Be forewarned. haha Something occurred to me today that I wanted to share with those who read our blog. I know there are about a million of you. j/k But if my epiphany is worthwhile to even one of you then I am determined to share it.
In one of the religion classes I took at BYU, the instructor once advised us to identify our biggest weakness and conquer it, move on to the next biggest, and so on. It seemed like very reasonable advice to me at the time. In pondering it however, I discovered a problem: what was my biggest weakness? My trouble certainly wasn't in identifying my weaknesses as I had a plethora of them (still do), but in determining which was my biggest. Was it the biggest because it occurred the most often or because it was the worst thing I did? It puzzled me so much that I wrote about it to my favorite missionary at the time (David). That was over 5 years ago.
During the first quarter of this year I have had many things revealed to me about myself that were very important for me to know, in terms of my personal growth. Anyway, today I was thinking as I was vacuuming and that's when I figured it out. My biggest weakness is the one which hampers my personal growth the most.
For example, up until recently my biggest weakness was discouragement. I have this vision of the kind of mother and wife I want to be and I've been very discouraged by the huge disparity between my vision and my reality. That discouragement more than anything else was keeping the gulf very wide, despite my efforts. Until I eliminated the role discouragement was playing in my life, even daily scripture study and prayer weren't going to close the gap. In college my biggest weakness was settling . . . the only thing I didn't "settle" for was my spouse. I could have done so much better scholastically if I hadn't previously put a limit on what I was capable of. I lowered my expectations for myself from what they had been in high school and settled for less. Many times I have wished I could go back and do it over, but that's not an option we have. All I can do is decide to never do it again.
Anyway, I just wanted to share it with you. From the book of Rachael, "Your biggest weakness is the one which hampers your personal growth the most." So pray for help in identifying and fixing it. :)

7 comments:

  1. wow yep, discouragement is one of my biggest weaknesses. It weasels its way into me and then I become paralyzed.I really don't know if i'll ever be able to overcome it completely. Its definitely what Satan wants to hear though. So I will keep trying! what a great post Rachael!

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  2. This was lovely to read today. Thank you for sharing.:) I have thought a lot about self discovery lately. I am in one of those cycles of life.:) So that made this post especially meaningful.

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  3. Thanks for sharing this, Rachael. I think you're absolutely right. I think my biggest weakness right now is fear, which equates to lack of faith. Anyway, I enjoyed reading what you had to say.

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  4. Wow! Thanks for sharing that, Rachael! I needed to hear it and I bet many people will benefit from you sharing your epiphany. ;)

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  5. Thanks for posting this! I too have many things I would love to work on and change in my life. I guess I need to evaluate which one is the most distracting.

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  6. So so true! That's something I definitely need to figure out and work on.

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  7. What a beautiful post. Thanks for sharing this--I needed to hear these things today. Glad I read this!

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