It's the return of the......

...Revolutionary. As I sit down to write this I am not sure what direction it will take. I have been a little bit depressed lately. I have in my room a picture of myself, Kerissa, and Savannah when we were sealed in the temple. I look at it every morning before I leave for work. It is a really nice picture of us taken from ground level with us looking down and the spires of the temple in the background and the angel Moroni. I look at myself in the picture and see someone who is fearless and full of faith and clean. I then start to feel so disappointed in myself because I have had the spirit so strong with me once, and I wonder how I could ever let go of that. I have begun to feel that I am in a hole I may never climb out of. I am really struggling with my smoking still and it is frustrating because it is the last bastion of what I must change to be really clean. A thought just occurred to me. I can't climb out of this hole. I must be lifted. If I pick myself up and just start to climb the lord will give me help from above and I will be lifted back onto solid ground. If I but have the faith to begin again. I need to gain that faith. Thus far in my struggles I have been full of fear. Fear and faith cannot inhabit the space. Just as a room cannot be full of light and darkness at the same time. I hope and pray that my faith may be as a candle on a candlestick to light my life and drive out the fear of failure. The fear of rejection. The fear of not being good enough. The fear of what I might become if I lead a clean and temple worthy life. It has seemed to me that when I am blazing the path that I was meant to in this life that the armies of hell and Satan constantly assail me with any number of obstacles. However when I lay low and follow another path that is not the one I am meant to follow I seem to be left alone. I choose now to follow the path that the lord wants me to. I know the path may be spiritually difficult and I will encounter many adversaries and obstacles. But it is what I must do. It is what I was born to do. And like in Lehi's dream if I but hold to the rod, which is the word of God, I have nothing fear. For the lord will be with me and will not let me fail. With him all things are possible. In the words of the prophet Nephi, "If the lord commanded me to say to the sea, be dry land, I could say it and it would be dry land." So if the lord can do that, then he can help me live the life I am supposed to be living. Keep fighting the good fight.