Sugar Factory

I have been pondering something the last couple of months as we have faced some stress as a family.  The picture to the side is of an old sugar factory that has been abandoned and left defenseless to weather storms and teenagers.  It is tattooed with graffiti and crumbling.  I have to admit that there are times I feel like I am crumbling and falling apart.   I have to wonder what it is I look like in comparison to what the Lord see's as my potential?  I feel somedays that I look like the mess pictured here and I have a long way to go and a lot of work ahead of me.  Somedays I feel hope.  How do we keep up moving forward without feeling like we are as big of a mess and as abandoned as this sugar factory?  How do we move forward each day to make something better with tomorrow with out feeling completely overwhelmed?  

I have a particular talk given by Jeffery R Holland several years ago that I love and gather strength from often.  

"There is, of course, one source of despair more serious than all the rest. It is linked with poor preparation of a far more serious nature. It is the opposite of sanctification. It is the most destructive discouragement in time or eternity. It is transgression against God. It is depression embedded in sin.
Here your most crucial challenge, once recognizing the seriousness of your mistakes, will be to believe that you can change, that there you can become different. To disbelieve that is clearly a Satanic device designed to discourage and defeat you. Fall on your knees and thank your Father in Heaven that you belong to a church and have accepted the gospel that promises repentance to those who will pay the price. Repentance is not a foreboding word. It is, following faith, the most encouraging word in the Christian vocabulary. Repentance is simply the scriptural invitation for growth and improvement and progress and renewal. You can change! You can be anything you want to be in righteousness.
If there is one lament I cannot tolerate it is the poor, pitiful, withered cry, “Well, that’s just the way I am.” If you want to talk about discouragement, that is one that discourages me. Please don’t give me any speeches which say “That’s just the way I am.” I’ve heard that from too many people who wanted to sin and find some principle of psychology to justify it. And I use the word sin again to cover a vast range of habits, some seemingly innocent enough, which nevertheless bring discouragement and doubt and despair.
You can change anything you want to change and you can do it very fast. That’s another Satanic deception that it takes years and years to repent. It takes exactly as long to repent as it takes you to say, “I’ll change”—and mean it. Of course there will be problems to work out and restitutions to make. You may well spend—indeed you had better spend—the rest of your life proving your repentance is genuine by its permanence. But change, growth, renewal, repentance can come for you as instantaneously as it did for Alma and the Sons of Mosiah. Even if you have serious amends to make, it is not likely that you would qualify for the term “the vilest of sinners” (Mosiah 28:4) which is Mormon’s phrase in describing these young men. Yet as Alma recounts his own experience in the 36th chapter of Alma [Alma 36] it appears to have been as instantaneous as it was stunning.
Do not misunderstand. Repentance is not easy or painless or convenient. It is a bitter cup from hell. But only Satan who dwells there would have you think that the necessary and temporary discomfort of acknowledging your sins is more distasteful than permanent residence there. Only he would say, “You can’t change. You won’t change. It’s too long and too hard to change. Give up. Give in. Don’t repent. You are just the way you are.” That, my friends, is a lie which comes from desperation. Don’t believe it."

I know that the Lord is very much aware of us and gives us time and opportunity to reach our desires, our desires of growth and progress.  I discovered today that change is easy to embrace once we acknowledge where the sin or the mess lies.  Is a belief that we feel is true that isn't?  Is it holding onto fear or anger that doesn't serve us anymore.  Is it the lack of ability to see what the Lord see's in us?  Is it stubbornness holding us back?  

What is standing in your way from experiencing abundance and joy?

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