My current calling is a Relief Society teacher, and I teach on the fourth Sunday. My assigned topics for this month are the wonderful talks that President Julie B Beck gave at conference in October. Unfortunately there were a lot of people who took offense at her words. Personally as I read them I felt a great sense of peace, comfort and purpose in my role as a woman in the church, and in my role as a mother to my children.
President Beck focuses on the need to defend families and to create a home environment that allows our children to learn and grow spiritually. In her talk she does not say that all women must be stay at home mothers. She does not say that we need to be perfect housekeepers, and she does not say that we need to be perfect. She does ask us to do our best at the tasks that we have before us and to choose to use our time wisely.
As I begin to prepare for this lesson, I find it difficult to cover the topics that I feel are important as I pray about the lesson, because I do not want anyone to feel inadequate or unworthy. It is important that we all realize that there is room for each of us to improve in our lives. We can continually strive to be a better person. At the same time we need to be accepting of where we are and what we can currently achieve when it comes to our goals and our families. It is dangerous to become frozen and unable to move forward because we are overwhelmed by the charge to continually improve ourselves.
Finding a balance between continually moving forward and accepting that we are human is a critical component to happiness. We do not want to become complacent, but it is not horrible to find contentment in our lives. As we find joy in self-mastery and in service we can find contentment in the life that we have without becoming complacent about our spirituality. We should enjoy each phase that we are in as we strive to do the things that we know are right.
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