Saturday, March 4, 2017

Strength in All Things

Mar. 4th, 2017

Happy March, everybody! This week is living up to the old adage quite nicely – March definitely came in like a lion, because midterms and projects abounded this week. However, I had a really sweet experience this week that begs to be shared – especially as I’ve tried to implement it in my life so far.

For a long time, I’ve had dreams of becoming an illustrator, and at the beginning of April, my last chance to try and major in it will come: a portfolio will be due and my fate will be decided there. I really want this to happen, and Heavenly Father has been really good at helping pathways open up and lead to endless possibilities. Now all that has to happen is hard work. And while I may have some strong points when it comes to making this artwork happen, there are many things that are my weakness and make me really nervous that I’m going to blow the opportunities I’ve been given. So, in order to see what my chances may be, I set up an appointment with the head of illustration at BYU. A bit terrifying to think about going, but wonderfully enlightening and refreshing as I left J.

We talked for a long time, and as I displayed my pieces, there was a common theme to what I needed to work on – making compositionally sound pieces. I had no clue how I was going to go about making that a reality, I got some tips, pointers, and examples shown to me of how I could work on it. Then, in addition to this knowledge, he told me to apply Ether 12:27 in the temporal sense – we all have weaknesses, but they are there to humble us and push us to become something even greater – that by the time I graduate that could be my greatest strength, as long as I let Heavenly Father come with me in my natural gifts!  

I learned two things from that experience: one, that the scriptures can really be applied in any situation we may be facing in life, and two, the gospel can be applied to anything in our lives. We know that the scriptures help us with spiritual problems, but it wasn’t until I started to pray for help and strength in creativity and inspiration that clear pathways were opened up for what I could do: I was acting as an effective instrument with what I had already been given. Secondly, if the gospel is everything our lives should be centered on, why not try and put all aspects of our lives into it? I challenge you all to try and pray and find what you can do to make your life more focused on receiving strength in weakness! So far, it’s working out for me pretty well J



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