Monday, April 13, 2009

The importance of developing your talent!

This is a topic I've had drilled into me since I was a wee tot! At church, school, & home......yet did I learn this painful and embarrassing lesson? Anybody that knows me will automatically know the answer to this question is "heck no...that would be way to easy"! Then I wouldn't have to do things the hard way and have a learning and a growing experience instead...right? At least that is what I've been telling myself for the last 24 hours.

I had the blessing of being born to two extremely musically talented individuals. They both have amazing voices that they have developed through their entire life. Being their oldest child I spent a lot of my growing up years striving to be as good and as talented as they are. The mistake I've made recently is not keeping up on the practice to keep that talent fully developed. This mistake caused me a bit of embarrassment.

As some of you know, I was recently called as the Young Women's President in our ward. This has been both fun and challenging. It's fun because I already love the girls in the program and I really enjoy spending time with them & the other leaders involved with the program. It's challenging because I feel like a juggler sometimes. I feel like I have to sometimes keep 10 balls in the air at one time. For the Easter lesson this year I decided to have our Laurel Advisor give a joint lesson to our entire young women. Brittany is a very talented teacher and all the girls love her.

She had a no talking lesson with a lot of props, videos, & music. She had already asked a couple of amazing singers in our ward to sing 2 songs, but was still in the need of 1 more. I made the mistake of volunteering. I only had to sing "I believe in Christ". I thought this would be a piece of cake because I've sang in a million times in church. However, I neglected to remember I hadn't sang a solo anywhere for years. I didn't really get nervous until the last second....then my knees started shaking & my voice was quivering. Nice and embarassing for no reason, since I knew everyone in the room. But I was disappointed with myself and my performance. Oh well!!! I finished the song better than I started it and I learned a personal lesson.