When You're Asked to Do What's Hard

Earlier today, I had lunch with the new missionaries in my branch. We talked about the youth and worked on our summer plan for youth Sunday school and mutual. And I felt so. dang. inadequate.

Lately, I feel that way a lot. I know I'm where Heavenly Father wants me to be, serving in the callings He wants me to perform, but I feel like I'm not good enough. It's been a very humbling year.

One of the quotes I clung to in my last two callings was Elder Maxwell's "God does not begin by asking about our ability, but only about our availability, and if we then prove our dependability, he will increase our capability." And it worked for me then.

I put as much time and effort into my callings as I could, and I saw Heavenly Father move mountains in me. Things didn't go perfectly -- there were activities that flopped, investigators who flaked, friends who fell away from the church and felt they couldn't be friends with me anymore because I gave the church so much of myself, one whole semester when hardly anyone came to institute. But overall, I felt productive. I felt like God was using me to make a difference.

This time... not so much.

I'm trying to be a good leader, teacher, and friend to the youth, but have I really been giving it my all? No. Not like I did before. So of course the miracles aren't the same. I frequently have the thought that I want to improve. I want to give more of myself to these callings. But I'm not sure where to even begin.

When I talk about this with my friends, they sometimes say that some callings are just hard and unpleasant. I believe that (please not primary, never primary), but I'm not willing to give up on this one, writing it off as a "bad experience" or "too hard." I love my little branch. I love the little group of teenagers who are trying to live a better life in the midst of a society that says their morality is immoral.

I don't know where to go from here. I don't know how to begin to do the things that I should be doing. But I do know that I want to do better, and that Heavenly Father asked me to do it because He knows I can.

There has to be a way, if I can just figure out where to start.

Sometimes

Sometimes I see all the posts where people tell their stories about what others have done to them, and I wonder if I'm doing something wrong by not writing one. I feel less alone when I read them, while also being horrified by just how many there are. It's a strange thing to scroll through an advocacy website and realize I know three of the women brave enough to show their faces with their stories. Three.

Yet none of the stories I've seen have been about a situation like mine. I wonder if I owe it to all the disabled women of the world, ridden with guilt for being a burden and not believing they can live a better life. I survived. I let myself be convinced that I didn't deserve what was done to me. I learned to believe that I don't ever have to accept being treated badly, even by the people who care for me. I finally know in my heart as well as my mind that I deserve to be treated well. Nobody can ever earn the right to hurt me by helping me with the things I can't do.

I know there are women with disabilities being abused by their caregivers, relatives, and friends right now. I know many of them believe that they deserve it for being a burden. I know many of them think they can't live without the help their abusers give them. I've been there. I know.

I wish I could reach out to every one of those women and tell them their worth. I wish I could tell them all that they're daughters of God and testify to them of just what that means. I wish I could put my hands on each of their shoulders and tell them that not only can they survive without the people who hurt them, their days would be so much brighter without them. I wish I could tell each and every one of them that no matter how many well-meaning strangers in the grocery store tell them how lucky they are to have their abusers in their lives, it's not true.

Someday I might tell the story of what was done to me, but I'm not ready yet. What I will tell, to everyone who will listen, is the story of what's been done for me.

We all have our personal Gethsemanes, but not a one of us is alone there. He who went there before us also goes there with us. And just like Him, we can leave those trials behind and move on to better things.