Girl in Transition

A few weeks ago a handful my favorite students graduated. I taught a couple of these kids all three years of their high school careers and I marvel at how much I’ve seen them grow.

As they marched passed me at graduation and we exchanged smiles, I speculated about what’s in store for them over the next 15 years. I wondered what type of women they would become. Would life serve them the traditional serving of college, marriage, and motherhood? What does fate have in store for them, and how will their best laid plans turn out, or not.

And then I realized I don’t have to worry. They would decide who they would become. Emerson said:

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

And it’s true! Life may deal us hand after hand after hand of experiences we didn’t anticipate, but ultimately, it is up to each one of us to determine who we will become within those parameters. I can choose to be happy, intelligent, healthy, whatever I want to be--who the core of me will be.

I have been thinking about this a lot over the last few weeks and have been carrying on an inner-dialogue. If I can decide who I am destined to become, who do I want to be? What kind of woman do I still want to work on becoming? I first have to think about the things I don’t have control over changing and then think about the rest.

David O. McKay has said, “You can change human nature. No man who has felt in him the Spirit of Christ even for a half a minute can deny this truth…You do change human nature, your own human nature, if you surrender it to Christ.”

I can have my very nature changed!

And just who is this mysterious woman I am destined to become? I don’t know--I’m still working on her.