- Ali Noble
Release Your Fear, Embrace Your Divinity
You are magnificent. Do you know that? Want to know how I know it? Because you are God's child.
I didn't grow up knowing I was a child of God. I felt the Holy Ghost sometimes, and I loved Jesus, but I didn't really know anything at all about God. When I learned I was His child, that He loved me and knew me, and that I could pray to Him, I struggled with the concept. I was told, God was a loving Heavenly Father, but I hadn't had a father in my life, so I couldn't relate to the example. Besides, if I was a child of God, why was life so hard? Why did I have to suffer so much?
I am a work in progress, but I've learned a few things. I hope they help you, too.
You Are Perfectly Imperfect
Just as Adam and Eve needed to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, in order to know pleasure from pain and joy from sorrow, so we are blessed through our struggles.
There are so many analogies, and I'm sure you've heard them all, but one of my favorites is the Japenese practice of Kintsugi.
Kintsugi ("golden joinery"), also known as Kintsukuroi("golden repair"), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-etechnique.

Every one of your trials has influenced you, left its mark on you, but it doesn't have to be a scarlet letter, but rather a badge of honor. God helps you put yourself together with mercy and grace, making you stronger and more precious in the process.
Believe in yourself, because God already does.
Dismiss Your Doubt
Ezra Taft Benson said, “Satan is increasingly striving to overcome [you] with despair, discouragement, despondency, and depression." And why wouldn't he? His life mission is to ruin God's plan and keep you from reaching your full potential. We live in a world that's practically custom-built to bring us down, but...

If your thoughts make you feel unworthy, incapable, and sad, you're playing right into the Adversary's hands. Instead, look to God and pray for an easy mind and lightened soul so you can see the good shining in the cracks of your life.
No One Else is YOU
Maybe you've dismissed this thought as trite, since you've likely heard it a billion times before, but there's a reason for that: IT IS TRUE. God isn't wasteful. Everything He does--everything He creates--serves a purpose. And that includes YOU.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.” Maryanne Williamson writes in A Return to Love
It's tempting to pretend you aren't special. That you can't make a difference in the world--in your community, or your family. If you aren't special, then you can't fail, and no one who might depend on you will be disappointed. I'm confident you know the truth, though. You feel it deep down--that truth that can't be denied.
You have unlimited potential, and the courage to test that potential begins with a desire to try. Try, and keep on trying. You may fall, you may break apart, but you will be healed and made better for the trial. Eventually, you will stand, confident and capable, because you are a child of God and He has brought you here to Earth, at this specific time. He needs you. We all do.
I love to write about people discovering their worth in the eyes of God. Maybe because I believe learning my own worth literally changed my life. Okay, definitely because of that!
The main character, Fiona, in Sing to Me (The Highlands #1), is a perfect example of this. I really related to her. You can get your copy from Amazon right here.
Blessings,
