Sam I Am

I have a friend who passed away this past Fall. One thing she said is that she wanted to be like Sam. I think most of us want to be like Nephi, and we feel we have to settle to be like Sam. Nephi had all the cool experiences. He had a huge sphere of influence among his own people and he does now through his written history, among people today. Sam humbly followed his brother, Nephi. He was out of the limelight. His sphere of influence was much smaller, perhaps only to his own children and siblings. I think most of us want to be and do something great, like Nephi. But when we look in the mirror, we see that we are simply a sister, a mother, a daughter, a friend to a few. We have willing and helping hands, we give what we can. We smile and remember to speak kindly to our children, we create a calm and happy atmosphere when we can. Actually, a lot of the time we are just trying to be the ideal we know we can be. We catch ourselves losing our tempers and we apologize. We humbly work and sweat beside our husbands and wake up several times in the night to take care of crying or needy little ones. We go to bed late and wake up early. And, we love what we do. When we hear our self talk begin saying we don't like it, we know we are tired or hungry or exhausted. So we say a prayer, breathe deeply and remember that we our blessed above women. What women in history have had it so good? I have always wanted to be like Nephi, but I am learning that like it or not, I am like Sam. Not the green eggs and ham Sam, but Nephi's older, humble, quiet, in-the-background, Sam.