Gratitude

Sometimes with service you are on the glorious end of the giving, the rendering, the sharing, the lifting, the restoring. What a tremendous feeling that is. Life is better, you're more grateful for what you have, and you feel blessed and enlarged personally.

But sometimes the tables are turned, and you are on the humbling end of the receiving, being rendered to, shared with, lifted up, and restored. What a tremendous feeling that is, as well. Life is better, you're more grateful for what you have, and you feel blessed and enlarged personally ... at least that's how I believe the Lord would have us feel. In a world and a culture where we are taught that you are valuable when you serve and give, we would do well to learn to be served and receive with that same grateful and swelling heart. At least, I know that such a feeling and reaction would bless my life.

In the last year, on multiple occasions, I have been on the receiving end of serving, giving, loving, helping, restoring, and blessing. At times I have met it with self-criticism and self-doubt, questioning my own worth because I was in need and required a blessing at the hands of another. But that did not strengthen me, nor did it lift me up, as I know that the experience was intended to do. Other times, however, I have received those blessings as gifts from God and let Him touch my heart through these acts of kindness, charity, and love. From personal experience I can say to you now that anything negative or demeaning that you tell yourself, any degrading or depressing feeling you have, any thought that tears you down or reduces your sense of worth because of being in a position of need is based in an all-out, vicious, and destructive lie. You are not being served out of pity for your inferiority or lack of worth, but rather because the Lord loves you infinitely and is using your circumstance to teach you to be more holy and to receive what He, and only He, has the power to give you. Indeed, you must become the greatest of receivers to gain the fullness promised you through the Atonement. And then, having more fully received of true charity - which is the love of God that He mercifully bestows upon us - you will be more able to lift another along the way who stands in need of what you can now give, which is perhaps more than you could have given before.

In this season of Thanksgiving, I am grateful for what my trials have been, and for what they have not been. The Lord has taught me many things, which I treasure above all else. They have been hard lessons to learn, and many I am continually learning (over and over again), but they have been worth it. May I be made equal to the opportunities and challenges that are ahead. And may I be ever more able to serve and be served, that all may be blessed and profited thereby.