Talks
Quotes
“Satan can take the most positive thing and turn it into poison. He understands our strength and potential. And he will stop at nothing to thwart us. He knows that if he can destroy the self-worth of mothers, he has destroyed the family.
He wants us to feel inadequate. He reminds us of our failures. He pits us against each other, so that we find ourselves comparing and contrasting, judging and faultfinding until we’ve destroyed our own support system. He tells us that our wayward children will never come back, that every effort we’ve ever made has been for naught. He tells us that our best is never good enough. Satan lies.” (The Measure of a Mother’s Heart by Toni Sorenson pg 2.)
I think many of us come to church each Sunday looking for encouragement and hope, and yet leave with guilt because we just don’t measure up. Please realize that the teachings of the church are goals we are striving for, not a checklist of things we should have already accomplished.
Marie Wilson said, “Show me a woman without guilt and I’ll show you a man.” We women are good at guilt. It’s okay if we feel guilty for a sin we’ve committed because the guilt will motivate us to repent and change our lives. However, I fear that many of us suffer from the type of guilt that is unnecessary, unrelenting and counterproductive. If we truly want to move forward and strengthen our homes and families, we have to get rid of the unnecessary guilt.
We are imperfect parents raising imperfect children in an imperfect world. There is going to be a great deal of imperfection! The goal is not perfection, but progress. Like J. Golden Kimball said, “I don’t always stay on the straight and narrow, but I try to cross it as often as I can.” Parenting is like that – two steps forward and one step back. Quite frankly, there will always be a gap between what our children deserve and what we can provide. We must accept that gap because it’s not going away any time soon. – Shannon Williams.
I’d like to share what I call “the rearview mirror analogy.” While driving it’s okay and even wise to glance up and look in our rearview mirror occasionally to know what’s going on behind our vehicle. But it would be devastating to drive down the road while staring into our rearview mirror. The path ahead of us requires our full attention and if we are preoccupied with what’s behind us we will crash. The same is true in life. We can glace back occasionally to learn from our mistakes and make amends. But to dwell on past mistakes constantly prevents us from focusing on the present and future, which require our full attention. – Shannon Williams
Elder Uchtdorf gave a wonderful talk to the women of the church. He mentioned how different men and women are when it comes to cooking. He feels heroic if he scrambles eggs. She apologizes for not adding an additional bay leaf.” A man’s motto is “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” A woman’s motto is, “If it’s good, let’s make it better.”
Elder Uchtdorf said, “To me it appears that our splendid sisters sometimes undervalue their abilities—they focus on what is lacking or imperfect rather than what has been accomplished and who they really are. Perhaps you recognize this trait in someone you know really well. The good news is that this also points to an admirable quality: the innate desire to please the Lord to the best of your ability. Unfortunately, it can also lead to frustration, exhaustion, and unhappiness.” (“Happiness, Your Heritage” October 2008)
Michelle Craig said, “These prophetic calls to action, coupled with our innate sense that we can do and be more, sometimes create within us what Elder Neal A. Maxwell called “divine discontent.” Divine discontent comes when we compare “what we are [to] what we have the power to become.” Each of us, if we are honest, feels a gap between where and who we are, and where and who we want to become. We yearn for greater personal capacity. We have these feelings because we are daughters and sons of God, born with the Light of Christ yet living in a fallen world. These feelings are God given and create an urgency to act.
We should welcome feelings of divine discontent that call us to a higher way, while recognizing and avoiding Satan’s counterfeit—paralyzing discouragement. This is a precious space into which Satan is all too eager to jump. We can choose to walk the higher path that leads us to seek for God and His peace and grace, or we can listen to Satan, who bombards us with messages that we will never be enough: rich enough, smart enough, beautiful enough, anything enough. Our discontent can become divine—or destructive.” (Michelle Craig “Divine Discontent, October 2018)
We, as mothers, cannot take all the credit or all the blame for the way our children turn out. Jenet Jacob Erickson said, “I once heard a very committed mother of young children say she had started a fund to cover the cost of the psychological counseling her children were sure to need because of her failures as a mother. When she said it, a knowing, nervous laugh erupted among the group of mothers present – as if they had all accepted a reality that their children’s future challenges would be blamed on their imperfections as mothers. It’s not hard to see why mothers might feel that way. Mothers are bombarded with contradictory “expert” advice on everything from how to get children to sleep and eat right, to how to coach them through emotions while disciplining them. In an “intensive mothering” culture that stresses the emotional fragility of children, it is tempting to feel that children’s challenges could have all been prevented if we as mothers had just followed the recommended “best practices.”
Dan Gottlier said, “A lot of guilt comes from the feeling that we have more influence than we really do.”
Because of individual progression in the pre-existence, no two children are born alike. Each comes to earth with specific gifts, talents and challenges. Each has a unique personality and strengths and weaknesses. When you add to that the principle of free agency and our children’s right to choose their own destiny, it becomes clear that we as parents cannot take all the credit or all the blame for how our children turn out. We’ve all heard President David O. McKay’s quote that “No success can compensate for failure in the home.” But keep in mind that successful parenting cannot necessarily be judged by the righteousness of our children. To do so would negate the principle of free agency. Our job as parents is to simply help our children reach their individual potential – whatever that may be.
Not only that, but parenting is an ongoing experience with a pretty steep learning curve. How many of us have said, “If I only knew then what I know now. I would do things so differently.” Hank Smith wisely said, “It’s not fair to judge past decisions with present knowledge.”Sometimes we just have to make the best decisions we can with the information we have at the time. Shannon Williams
Heavenly Father lost a third of his children to poor decisions before the world even began. Do you think he blames himself? Can you see Him in heaven beating Himself up because some of His children didn’t turn out the way he had hoped? I think some parents try to take the Savior’s place in their children’s lives by atoning for their children’s sins. That is not our role. The Savior has already paid that price. – Shannon Williams
“Perfect parents wouldn’t be perfect parents because they wouldn’t be able to model repentance and apologies to their children.” Debra Sansing Woods once said, “As a professional in the corporate world years ago, I had become accustomed to immediate and positive feedback (“Great job on meeting the deadline.” “Thanks for all the work you do; we’d like to give you a raise.”), so when I became a full-time mom I went through a rather unexpected period of adjustment. Suddenly I went from receiving positive daily feedback on my job performance to receiving almost no verbal feedback whatsoever. It would have been ridiculous for me to have expected any feedback from my little ones. And my husband, as wonderful as he is, will admit he is not always very good at verbalizing compliments. I missed and could have benefited from some positive feedback. Feeling that void, I have learned to pause and acknowledge to myself what I am doing well – to say, whether to myself or in my journal, things like: “Good job, you got all the laundry done,” or “Hey, that was a good move – dropping that endless to-do list to read to your toddler.” Such positive self-talk can make a world of difference for you, helping you to remember your efforts really do make a difference.” (10 Secrets to Being a Happy Mother of Young Children LDS Living March/April 2007)
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