This one may get a little churchy so consider yourself warned. I was sitting in church sunday and wasn’t feeling well. I made it through sacrament meeting, then sunday school, and considered heading home for the 3rd meeting. Sunday school ended and I about stood up to go but decided I could last a little longer. The teacher walked over and handed me a quote to read during the lesson. I couldn’t leave now.
The lesson began and it was about love. Pure Christ like love. Most of the lesson was pulled from talks by Cheicko Okazaki. She has numerous books and spoke a lot for our church but I had never heard of her previous to the lesson. I glanced down to the quote and of course it was everything I needed to hear. It’s no coincidence she had me read the following from her talk.
“We need to love ourselves. Remember that in a gospel sense love means and unconditional desire for the eternal well-being of a soul. Do we feel that we’re worthy of such an unconditional regard? Not just someday. Not just if we do everything on the list. But right now? The lord is my helper. I can go to him. He loves me and wants an eternity of good things for me. But he also wants to give me seconds, and minutes, and hours of good things right now. This is true for you, too. He’s not waiting for us to become perfect before we can be happy. We can take our time. We can enjoy ourselves. We can consult our own needs and wants. We can forgive ourselves for what we can’t do, and we can be patient about the things we can’t do yet. We can lighten up and stop punishing ourselves by thinking we have to do it all.”
Pretty heavy stuff right? The conversation went on and we touched upon the pressure that we all feel to be perfect. The pressure to be the best house wife, blogger, photographer, killer abs, dancer, choreographer, best dressed… and the list goes on and on and on.
Celebs look perfect from the outside and so do the Jones’ next door. The reality is we are all fighting our own battles and sometimes I can only do one thing on the list. That should be enough. Why do we beat ourselves up at the end of the day? So what dinner isn’t done? At least the laundry is! I’m ok with that! I can’t do all the things but I’ll try my best. If it’s enough for God, it’s certainly enough for me.
xoxo
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