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.