Weak Things

Sorry about the lack of recent posts. I've been working on getting back in the habit of writing in my journal, and it seems to absorbed all my blogging time. After the journal guilt trip lesson in the Wilford Woodruff manual, I've recently rediscovered some of my old journals.

As I was reading through them, I realized something: I keep making the same mistakes and discoveries over and over again. Seriously, I was reading my journal entries from last summer, and I could almost just change the dates and call them good for this summer. The same rants about a lack of time, dropping good habits in favor of stress, feeling lonely and worried, new resolve to do better, etc. etc. in endless cycles of the same realizations, the same problems.

It seems to me that maybe these are the things that the scriptures are referring to when they talk about taking our weaknesses to the Lord. For some reason, I had always thought of "weak things becoming strong" in terms of talents, or areas of knowledge. For example, I know I could never have made it through my Physics series without the Lord's help--it's simply not something I could have understood on my own.

Perhaps the scripture is true in that way, but I wonder if the Lord wasn't more specifically referring to weaknesses of character, those flaws in our own personality and thought process that we can't seem to see past. Because as I read my journal entries, I notice that when I am not keeping up on my scripture reading and those daily things, my weaknesses are magnified. When I become overwhelmed with my weakness and sink into the depths of despair, it is then that I am inspired to pick up again, to come close to God, and as I do, I see my weaknesses fading away.

It's almost like my own personal pride cycle. I'm not sure that I could ever fully be rid of it, but maybe someday I'll be able to shorten those downward periods and prolong the periods of light.