The Big 4-0

Yep, I turned 40 this month. I was a little apprehensive about how I would deal with this momentous occasion. It wasn't too bad though. I read Elder Holland's article, "The Best is Yet to Be" in the January 2010 Ensign several days before my birthday. It was just what I needed to hear to put me in the right attitude--a positive one. Here are my favorite excerpts:

"I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead and remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives.

The poet Robert Browning wrote:

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in his hand
Who saith, “A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!

Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that Christ truly is the “high priest of good things to come” (Hebrews 9:11)."

Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Best Is Yet to Be,” Ensign, Jan 2010, 22–27