I follow another blog (modernmollymormon.blogspot.com). There are a lot of different people that post with some GREAT ideas and insights. I had to share (with permission) one of the posts from yesterday. I'm not good with creating links, so if you want to go to the sources of each of the quotes, you'll need to actually go to the Molly Mormon blog. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

What would you do if someone - your husband, your brother, your son - confided in you that they were having impure thoughts? Take a minute and just ponder what advice you would give to him. Would you tell him to pray when those thoughts creep in? Read the scriptures? Hum his favorite hymn?

Have you ever sat through RS looking around you at all of the perfect women in the Ward. Have you wondered why they even let you in the door? Do you spend time comparing yourselves to those women - thinking, "If only I was as beautiful as Sister Prettypants," or, "If only I was as intelligent as Sister Smartypants," or, "If only I could bake like Sister Betty Crocker?" Sisters, these are impure thoughts.

Brother Steve Gilliland, in an Ensign article, said, "Once we can turn off the negative voices, we can see their source. Discouragement is not the Lord’s method—it’s Satan’s. Satan emphasizes your weaknesses; the Lord, your ability to overcome. Satan urges immediate perfection to make you feel inadequate. The Lord leads you toward perfection." (emphasis added)

Sister Sheri Dew said, "[Lucifer] wants us to compare ourselves to others and then to criticize and judge one another."

I love what Sister Holland wrote on the subject. She said:

“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 of 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. Ironically, that has allowed me to admire and enjoy Jeff’s ebullience even more.

“Somewhere, somehow the Lord ‘blipped the message unto my screen’ that my personality was created to fit precisely the mission and talents he gave me. For example, the quieter, calmer talent of playing the piano reveals much about the real Pat Holland. I would never have learned to play the piano if I hadn’t enjoyed the long hours of solitude required for its development. This same principle applies to my love of writing, reading, meditation, and especially teaching and talking with children. Miraculously, I have found that I have untold abundant sources of energy to be myself. But the moment I indulge in imitation of my neighbor, I feel fractured and fatigued and find myself forever swimming upstream. When we frustrate God’s plan for us, we deprive this world and God’s kingdom of our unique contributions, and a serious schism settles in our soul. God never gave us any task beyond our ability to accomplish it. We just have to be willing to do it our own way. We will always have enough resources for being who we are and what we can become.”

"My personality was created to fit precisely the mission and talents he gave me."

Oh, sisters, I know that this is true! I know that we each have individual talents, spiritual gifts for us to accomplish what we have been commissioned by God to accomplish in this life. Paul, in a beautiful letter to the Corinthians, talks about this very thing. Corinthians, chapter 12, is an excellent chapter to read any time we are in a comparing mood.

Paul says, "The body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him."

Let's remember that impure thoughts come in many forms. And some of them, for us as women in the Church, come in the form of feelings of inadequacy. So, when we find ourselves in a comparing or a discouraged mood let us give ourselves that same great advice we would give to others. Let's hum our favorite hymn. Read our favorite scripture. And, especially, let us pray to Heavenly Father that he will help us remember and see our mission and our spiritual gifts.