Zina, your comment was great, and that last paragraph nearly took my breath away. Thank you.

And a cool picture too, really perfect.

Some people probably need to be told to play not-so-big but I think there are many more people held back by fear or shame or feelings of inadequacy (and sometimes it’s the same person at different times…I go through periods of pulling back and reprioritizing and simplifying and quieting where I could have written a post that is the flip side of this one). After I wrote this post in early September, Elder Uchtdorf gave his wonderful creativity talk and that resonated with me and my thoughts about this, too.

Happy New Year, all!

Twelve years later I am a very assertive wife, so I’m confident that I can overcome my self-annihilating tendencies when properly motivated. But the tendencies are always cropping up in fresh new settings — now, for example, I can tend to stress over how I’m going to get all the housework done by myself, forgetting that I have a husband and two of my children who are able to do a good portion of it. (This, too, I’m overcoming. The motivation is definitely not lacking.)

My oldest child nearly always prefers to stay very far from the limelight, but he will suddenly eagerly seek attention when he’s doing or demonstrating something he loves, so I try to notice those moments and nourish them — and let him do his own shy/quiet thing the rest of the time. My second and third children, both daughters, are both VERY “out there” — far more than either my husband or me — and watching them do their uninhibited thing brings me a lot of enjoyment, especially since I like to think it means I haven’t passed on my own handicaps to them. I do notice that the older daughter is starting to become more reserved in some contexts as she becomes more aware of social conventions, but so far this hasn’t seemed to happen to a crippling degree, so I see it more as a case of her maturing in positive ways and being sensitive to others than as a case of her being stifled.

I also think there’s a very fine line between letting our light shine and being narcissistic (a line best determined on a case-by-case basis.) I do think there’s room in the world for everyone to be “powerful beyond measure” as in the quote above, but there wouldn’t be much benefit to that unless we’re all also generous enough to take time out from being fabulous enough to appreciate others’ fabulousness (and again, we can err on either extreme — from having no time to appreciate others, or taking no time to develop our own greatness.)

Actually I’m now thinking that we shine best when we’re seeking God’s glory and not our own — which is a thought that the Williamson/Mandela quote implies but doesn’t quite put explicitly. Sometimes we shine best by casting our light on someone else; sometimes we have to give up our shyness or fears to let the light shine right on us.

Also: my patriarchal blessing says something about that there will be “more opportunity for progression and growth” in the Millenium than in our current mortal state, which has often been very comforting to me as I’ve encountered very debilitating challenges inhibiting my growth and others’. For many of us in this world, great triumphs over mortal weaknesses will be barely visible in contrast to what some others (who inherited different challenges) may be able to accomplish, and once our mortal constraints are removed, we’ll *all* be able to shine much more brightly. Or, in yet other words, for some in this life it’s a great triumph just to get out of bed in the morning.