But I'm So Weak, or I'm Having Enough Trouble With Myself

 

I have recently been struggling with feeling so very weak and down. Especially during times like this, I often struggle with fierce feelings of independence. I want to do things by myself. I want the Lord to strengthen me just enough so I can start doing things on my own again. However, as I have been taught again and again, I both cannot and am not expected to go through hard times by myself. Or easy times. I am not strong enough. And that's kind of the point.

All of our strength and ideas to do good things come from the Lord. All of our hope is in Him, not in ourselves.

And Jesus is a person, not an idea.

While we are weak, He is not. He's really understanding. And patient. And persistent. He won't ever give up on us, even if we give up on ourselves or on Him for a little while. Our perspective is sometimes blurred, and we're not perfect, but we aren't expected to be right now. The point of living the gospel is to receive His strength and to have Him tutor us, to teach us to become like Him.

Elder Neal A. Maxwell expressed an interesting thought: "Though we feel weak, our help is much needed by those...who will be undertaking the very same 'mighty change' in their hearts and lives."

There are people in my life who are such strengths to me, and it's odd to think that they are having their own challenges, but they are. The point is that we are all living through a difficult experience. We may need help, but everyone around us does too. We don't need to look very far to find someone who needs encouragement. The Lord has given us families and friends who we are sometimes uniquely able to help. While we are not able to help solve or take on everyone's problems, we can lift when we can and encourage others to allow Christ to help them.

As we lean on each other, we can help each other look to Christ, our Friend who is also our only true source of comfort and strength. He will shoulder (for He already has!) and lift our burdens in personalized ways as we give them to Him. And He will help us to help "succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees (Doctrine and Covenants 81:5)" of others as He lifts up and strengthens our own weak hands and knees.