[Friday Favorites: Your Happily Ever After]

One of my favorite talks is 'Your Happily Ever After' which was given by President Dieter Uchtdorf, 2nd counselor in the First Presidency of the church. He gave this talk during the April 2010 conference. I wasn't able to attend the conference but a few months after General Conference I was given the opportunity to speak at a Young Women in Excellence, and my assignment was to relate my own pagaent experiences with this talk. After reading it and being so touched by it, I decided that I'd make it a goal to read this particular talk on a weekly basis to help remind me of my own happily ever after. And I encouraged the young women that night to do the same.

Aren’t those wonderful words to begin a story? “Once upon a time” promises something: a story of adventure and romance, a story of princesses and princes. It may include tales of courage, hope, and everlasting love. In many of these stories, nice overcomes mean and good overcomes evil. But perhaps most of all, I love it when we turn to the last page and our eyes reach the final lines and we see the enchanting words “And they lived happily ever after.”

Isn’t that what we all desire: to be the heroes and heroines of our own stories; to triumph over adversity; to experience life in all its beauty; and, in the end, to live happily ever after?

(-Pres. Uchtdorf)

 I love how he points out that EVERY story in fairy tales begins with 'Once Upon A Time...' and eventually ends with '...and they lived happily ever after'. Had it not been for the adversity and hardships they had faced and had overcome, they never would've ended 'HAPPILY EVER AFTER'.......

The only thing different with the fairy tales and us are plainly that...it's a fairy tale. This is real life. The decisions we make from our 'Once Upon A Time' determines how our 'happily ever after' will turn out. Choices we make, whether good or bad determine that. We have to make mistakes. In order to know good from evil, there must be evil. We must know that there is something better for us that our Heavenly Father has planned. As I gave my talk to the YW that night I compared this talk to my pagaents and explained that I had lost 3 pagaents before actually winning 1. The first pagaent loss was hard to face, by the time the second and third came around I just wanted to throw the towel in and give up. The hardships, criticism, and feelings of failure to those that helped me were my adversity. I wanted to give up....but I didn't. Next thing you know..I won!! =) When we maintain faith and perserverence we'll overcome adversity no matter what form it comes in.
As I do read this talk over and over again (monthly, because I totally slack on weekly and tend to forget) it truly helps me by reminding me to keep that eternal perspective while I'm making day by day choices. This talk truly applies to everyone, not just young women in makng decions of how they'd like their happily ever after to turn out....