“Our Father in Heaven needs us as we
are, as we are growing to become. He has intentionally made us different from
one another so that even with our imperfections we can fulfill his purposes. My
greatest misery comes when I feel I have to fit what others are doing, or what
I think others expect of me. I am most happy when I am comfortable being me and
trying to do what my Father in Heaven and I expect me to be.
For many years I tried to measure
the oft times quiet, reflective, thoughtful Pat Holland against the robust,
bubbly, talkative, and energetic Jeff Holland and others with like qualities. I
have learned through several fatiguing failures that you can’t have joy in
being bubbly if you are not a bubbly person. It is a contradiction in terms. I
have given up seeing myself as a flawed person because my energy level is lower
than Jeff’s, and I don’t talk as much as he does, nor as fast. Giving this up
has freed me to embrace and rejoice in my own manner and personality in the
measure of my creation.”
Portraits of Eve: God’s
Promises of Personal Identity, Patricia T. Holland, LDS Women’s treasury:
Insights and Inspiration for Today’s Woman {Salt Lake City: Deseret Book
Co., 1997}
I love this quote. First of all, because I have experienced
similar thoughts and feelings, with a bit of reversal with my spouse. I have
many times tried to measure my passionate and expressive self to the quiet, reflective,
peacemakers of the world like my husband. I have often found myself admiring
and wishing I could be like Charles and others with similar qualities. But I
have also found through my own fatiguing failures that you can’t have joy in
being a quiet person when you are naturally a very expressive person. Many times,
I felt like I was suffocating as I constantly tried to suppress the natural desire
to jubilantly express my thoughts and feelings. I have slowly learned, like
Sister Holland, to stop seeing myself as a flawed person and to realize that I
wouldn’t have been given the gift of being able to express my feelings and put
them into words if God hadn’t wanted me to use it.
At this time of New Year’s resolutions and goals and thoughts
of trying to be better and do better, I wanted to share this. It is good to
want to recognize our weaknesses and want to work on them. For example, I need
to learn to be still at times, and my husband needs to speak up at times, and
that’s not a bad thing. But we should also be careful to not go too far to wishing
away the very gifts and qualities and personality traits that make us who we are
and give us the ability to uniquely contribute to the world. Your family and
those you meet in this life need you right now, just as you are. You are enough
for them, even with your imperfections. You have something special and original
to offer the world.
As we look to our Heavenly Father and our Savior, they
can help us know the things we can work on and improve. But they will also help
us see who we truly are in their eyes and their plan for us and the gifts we
have to offer. And as we discover our own talents and abilities and truly use
them in the best way we know how, we will begin to recognize and see the gifts
of all of those around us and come to appreciate them, instead of using them to
compare ourselves or make us feel deficient.
Even with the
mistakes we will inevitably make or the ways we know we fall short…the world
needs quiet, peacemaking Charles’, it needs expressive, passionate Melissa’s,
and it most definitely needs you too. 
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