"At our spiritual best we are a brew of splendid flaws and unspeakable potential...You have fingerprints and toe prints that are uniquely yours. You are a spiritual snowflake. No one is exactly like you. The One who created and assembled you made you absolutely unique. You have been given gifts that are yours alone."-pg.13 & 28
"In the pain, the agony, and the heroic endeavors of life, we pass through a refiner's fire, and the insignificant and the unimportant in our lives can melt away like dross and make our faith bright, intact, and strong."-James E. Faust
Sometimes I think that the stars and planets align and send you the book that you just need at that precise moment in your life. For me, this was the book! Lately I have been feeling a little overwhelmed in certain aspects of my life. I find myself looking around and not seeing very clearly an end in sight to my different trials. Toni Sorenson has written this book about how we have come to this earth, not to have an easy life, but to go through fire and come out on the other side refined. She breaks down the process in which actual metal is refined and then equates it to the spiritual refinement process that we all must go through. She writes, "How interesting our life stories would be if we told them scar by scar." Mortality tests us all, feeling at times like a scorching crucible built to try our faith and fortitude. When disappointment overwhelms us and our adversity seems unfathomable we must decide: will we be defeated by life's unavoidable tribulations, or will we allow them to make us stronger? Amidst the storms of life - when the heat of the refiner's fire seems too much to bear - we can take comfort in the realization that refined is not a word of warning, but a remarkable word of hope
We'd all better understand that we all struggle and need each other. And we can take comfort in the fact that the Refiner is always with us. Remember-
"Our refinement isn't all about the falling; it's about the rising."
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