I remember when I was about 13, I was tested to see if I have a testimony in the gospel. I wasn't sure what I believed. I had grown up hearing that it was true and that's just what I accepted to be true. But I didn't have that reassuring feeling that it was the one and only true church. I thought at the time I knew that everything was true... but now I am confused more than I ever have been.
I don't know how to find myself. Part of me just wants to give up and just let whatever happen, happen. But then the other part is telling me that I just need to keep trying hard and that it will all pay off in the end. It's like the Relief Society lesson yesterday... Patience. I just need more patience. But it is so hard because I really just want to know now who I am and what I truly believe in.
It really has just kind of hit me that I don't know what I believe in. I don't even know if I have a testimony anymore. I just keep telling myself that I'm being stupid because I know it is all true because that's what I have always heard. But yesterday I remember hearing a girl bear her testimony. She started out by saying something about how if you don't repeatedly share your testimony it starts to slip away. I think that is so true. I think I have just been scared and have been burdened with a lot of different things that my testimony has slipped away. And now I don't know how to get it back or even if I want it back.
I feel like I know what I need to do in order to get it back. I have a lot of changes to make if that is the case. But if I decide not to try to get it back then I don't have to change at all. But now I don't know what to decide or how to make that decision. I mean I don't even know if praying will honestly give me an answer. So if I just pray about it, I don't know if an answer will actually come.
Deep down I know that choosing to gain my testimony again is what is right. I think I just get caught up in all the little things of the world and let them start to control my life and the way I think. Now I need to set out a plan of how to get back onto the straight and narrow path and stick to that. There are a lot of changes that need to be made.
I think this is me starting over in finding out who I am. I hope that when I find where I belong and what I believe, I will be happy with it. I am going through a hard time, but in the end it will all pay off. Its like what President Brigham Young once said:
"This life was designed to be a test-- A test to determine if we want to be a part of the Kingdom of God more than anything else... God never bestows upon his people, or upon an individual, superior blessings without [first] a trial to prove them."
"This life was designed to be a test-- A test to determine if we want to be a part of the Kingdom of God more than anything else... God never bestows upon his people, or upon an individual, superior blessings without [first] a trial to prove them."
