FInding Yourself

Finding out who you really are is something that everyone has to go through at one point and time in their life. You find out who you are by being tested to show what you truly believe in. Some have to find out who they are really early, others, later in life. I started trying to find myself earlier in life and now I still don't know who I am or what I believe in. I just can't seem to figure it out.

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."