Your Mission in Life is Now

I have been drawn to this month's Ensign many times over the past few weeks.  I have read and reread the article "Your Mission in Life is Now" (you can read it here).  The woman writing the article talks about how, in her young adult years, she spent a lot of time wondering about her mission in life and looking to some distant future point when her mission would be fulfilled, but coming to the realization that her mission in this life is now. 

That is how I have felt.  I have wondered about the future and what it holds and what responsbilities I will be given.  But as I look back on my life, I realize that I have already been given my life's mission's responsibilities.  My most important role, I have been told, is that of motherhood. 

She talks about the preciousness of the present.  To act on the present, enjoy the present, trusting that the work we are doing now won't be in vain. 

My mission has already started.  It started with my birth.  I was born to a mother with mental illness.  I saw how my father loved her despite that illness.  I saw his patience, his understanding, his devotion---not just until things get hard do us part, but I saw him love a woman that he looked at in an eternal perspective, knowing that if he endured this trial until the end, that he would be blessed with that same woman eternally, but that she would be made whole through the atonement.  He knew that the Atonement would make up for those unfairnesses of life and he worked toward that eternal goal. 

Now, armed with that knowledge and example, I believe that my life it not a coincidence.  I was placed on this earth at this time and place for reasons that my Heavenly Father understood.  I just need to find out what he wants me to do and do it today!!