Wednesday, February 6, 2013

You are not perfect and neither are your neighbors

 My house does get messier than this, I just took a picture of what my house looked like yesterday.  : )

President Uchtdorf gave an amazing talk in the Relief Society Conference in 2011
 “I want to tell you something that I hope you will take in the right way — God is fully aware that you and I are not perfect,” he said. “Let me add — God is also fully aware that the people you think are perfect are not.”
President Uchtdorf cautioned sisters to not spend time and energy comparing themselves to others.
“Everyone has strengths and weaknesses,” he said. “It’s wonderful that you have strengths. It’s part of your mortal experience that you have weaknesses.”
President Uchtdorf said perfection is a long-term goal.
“It’s OK that you’re not quite there yet,”
What does it mean to be perfect? 
In God's perspective? 
It doesn't mean that you always have your hair and make up done perfectly. It doesn't mean that your house is always spotless. Or that your kids are perfectly behaved. Perfection in Heavenly Father's sense doesn't mean that your kids have to be potty trained at 18 months or that they are reading by age 2. That you have the best kid on the basketball team or that your daughter is the most popular in school. 
Socially we sometimes put these expectations on ourselves and others. 
But we have never had any counsel that we should be striving for these things. 
When we are asked to strive for perfection it is talking about perfecting our insides not our outsides. 
It means that we need to repent when we do things wrong. It means striving to make those weaknesses we have become strengths. It means serving others with love in our hearts. It means trying to gain more spiritual gifts and knowledge. Strive to gain and perfect our talents
It doesn't mean we need to do it all overnight. 
It means as you keep trying to do these things you will get better at doing them! 
And over time you will be able to perfect some of them and get closer than you were to begin with for others. And whatever is lacking in the end, the Atonement will make the difference. 
I hope we can all have charity towards each other and help each other lessen the load and competition of temporal things so we can focus on the spiritual things while we get the necessary temporal things done.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

oh thank you for this! i love it. it's so easy to compare. especially in the blog world where all we see are the things people want to share! you are soooo cute. i wish we could hang out more! at least we are blog friends :)

Steve and Nicole said...

this is probably my favorite quote EVER! it needs to be on my wall. love it, thanks for the reminder :) also perfect pictures haha

Mandy said...

LOVE everything about this post. All SO SO true and such a great reminder. Isn't it funny sometimes the things we think we have to do to be good mommas...a dirty house SHOULD be a requirement actually when I think about it. :) Kids=having fun! Anyway, thanks for sharing your testimony..you are so great at that AND you are such a great example!

Tami P said...

What a great reminder! It was actually refreshing to see photos of a normal home compared to the always perfect photos people usually post on the internet. Thank you for sharing that quote. I will need to record it someplace where I will always remember it!