This I Believe.....

In my English class we were given the assignment to write a This I Believe paper. We were to pick a belief that we strongly believe in. This assignment was based off the www.thisibelieve.org website. It has over thousands of essays written by famous people to every day people. Some of the essays are very touching, funny and even made me laugh. But the hardest thing was to write my own. I thought long and hard of what would be a good belief and personal story to go along with it. As we were told to write down ideas many came to mind but I still was having trouble picking one. My topics ranged from friends, family, community events to love. When the topic came to me. I believe in the strength of cancer patients. With my mom having kidney cancer and this topic being so personal to me it seemed like an easy topic. I got further and further into the paper and it seemed to get harder every word I wrote. Tears began to run down my face as I remembered the struggle my family went through. But I remember how strong my mom was. She continued to live her life as nothing had changed as we awaited the surgery in Salt Lake City. She assured us that everything would be okay and that God was with us every step of the way. She showed us that she believed in having strength beyond her own. 

"In the strength of the Lord we can do and endure and overcome all things."- Elder David A. Bednar. 

I am very blessed to still have my mom after her having kidney cancer. My mom is my rock and my strength. She has been there through everything in my life always supporting me in everything I wanted to do even if I wasn't good at it. She always encouraged me to do my best and that no matter what she still loved me and would be there for me! My mother is my role model because I have never seen a stronger person so close to me. With everything that she has gone through she has always trusted in the Lord to get her through any obstacle that stood in her way. With my mom having cancer and me only being 14 at the time that is when I learned that God has plans for us. My testimony grew from that day. I believe that we do have strength beyond our own which reminded me of a lesson taught in seminary last year about Nephi having strength beyond his own. It was when his brothers Lamen and Lemuel had bonded Nephi. Nephi had then prayed to God asking to give him "strength that I may burst these bands with which I am bond" After he asked for this his bands were loosed. He received strength beyond his own. This shows that if we ask God for help he will give us the strength we need to overcome anything in our lives.