It has been a long month for me, and today was not my best. (The twins have had a relapse of not sleeping through the night.) Normally, I would be beating myself up emotionally right now as I drift off to sleep, but not tonight. Tonight, I am making my anchor the fact that I am a child of God, and that no matter how good of a mom, home managing engineer, wife, or friend I am, I am a loved child of God. The ironic thing is that the most common lullaby I sing daily is just that, "I am a child of God". I haven't been listening as I sing to my boys. I haven't been applying that title to this sleep-deprived, exhausted, mother. Yet, this week doing so had been my goal, and it has changed everything.
When I base my self-perception on God's love for me, my love for myself becomes the one constant in my day because so is His. This morning I read the following from Gordon B. Hinckley:
"There is also in our society a sad tendency among many of us to belittle ourselves. Other persons may appear to us to be sure of themselves, but the fact is that most of us have some feelings of inferiority. The important thing is not to talk to yourself about it. … The important thing is to make the best of all that we have. Don’t waste your time feeling sorry for yourself. Don’t belittle yourself. Never forget that you are a child of God. You have a divine birthright. Something of the very nature of God is within you. We sing, “I am a child of God” (Hymns, no. 301). That isn’t just a figment, a poetic figment--that is the living truth. There is something of divinity within each of us that needs cultivation, that needs to come to the surface, that needs to find expression. You fathers and mothers, teach your children that they are, in a very literal way, sons and daughters of God. There is no greater truth in all the world than that--to think that we have something of divinity in us. Believe in yourself. Believe in your capacity to do great and good things. Believe that no mountain is so high that you cannot climb it. Believe that no storm is so great that you cannot weather it. … You are a child of God, of infinite capacity."
It allowed me not to wallow in depression when I didn't live up to my ideals for myself. So today, when it is so clearly evident that so many suffer in this world, and many ask how there could be a God if He would allow so much pain, I would like to take this moment to declare that He does not create the pain of this world. That is the work of mortality, and the men and women who are a part of it. God will, however, sustain each of us through the pain with his love if we will allow Him to. #childofgod #sharegoodness #hislovechangeseverything
