Do You Understand Who You Are?

As always, I love Elder Uchdorf. Like he said, "think of where you come from, this knoweldge challenges everything ..you are glorious and eternal."

You are more -much more than a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Your abuse and your history does not define you. It may have influenced many parts of your life-both good and bad, but ultimately you are much more!! It know it is hard to believe that- especially during the days that the abuse and trying to heal from it- is so all consuming. There IS much more to you though !

What are some of your talents? What are some of your hobbies? What are some of the character traits you came down to earth with? Sometimes I ask those I counsel to create a list of their talents and character traits. Most of them find this assignment fairly difficult. We are all good at listing what we are not good at , but have to think harder when trying to find what we are good at. As a result, I will often ask them to go around and ask people that they trust- to add to the list. This is not neccessarily an easy assingment either. Even when they have gathered this information, it takes some effort to believe it.

For young women's activities or at girls camp- I remember doing something similar- where we had someone sit in the middle of a circle and everyone had to take turns saying something positive about the person. I HATED that activity. I thought it was stupid and contrived and just not real. If people were forced to come up with something to say about me -it was hard for me to believe that it was very sincere. I remember thinking..these people don't even know me! I think my reaction said more about how I felt about myself then about how others felt. Now older and a little more mature, I still don't like that activity. That said I do think that others may be better at recognizing the good in is, then we are of ourselves. Our spirit shines through. So take a chance -ask someone to list a few things about you.

One of the most common requests I get in counseling from women especially- is to increase their self esteem. I think that that is also the hardest thing requested of a counselor. I don't really know how to go about doing this. I think self esteem is a gift from god. A precious gift that as children of our heavenly father- we all need if we are going to be able to withstand the trials of life.

Recently my 8th grade daughter had an experience on her bus ride home from school. An unhappy bully was trying to get her and her friends attention by bragging about how rich his dad was, ect. When they chose to ignore him -he was not so pleased and began to bully them and call them names. Normally this would not bother my daughter (She has put up with this particular bully since kindergarten) but he happened to say something negative that she already believed about herself. And so what he said- hit too close to her heart. When she related the experience to me -I was naturally in "mama bear" mode and was furious!  I am sure that is how heavenly father feels when he sees his children bullying and abusing his children. And yet like heavenly father, I cannot always step in and make it all better. The most important thing I can do is to teach my daughter of her worth. That when someone bullies her- she can stand tall and know of her worth. This is not so easy! Especially when we already belittle ourselves over what we think are flaws.

How then does one go about gaining the vision that we are glorious and eternal. What has helped you?