Today and yesterday we did a lot of clean up and chores. I heard things like...
"It's not fair."
"I need to take a break."
"Why can't we just watch a show and do the work later?"
In my cleanup......I came across a list of very good quotes from church leaders that I received years and years ago. They are quotes that deal with frustration and living a life with our imperfections and weakness, and how to come to terms with living in a world as imperfect people with other imperfect people.
I'd like my kids to know that our blog journal is full of happy pictures, because we love to remember the highlights of each month. However, the day-to-day is full of hard work, boring work and tedious tasks that challenge us. That is normal, and though it's not fun, it's certainly necessary in order for us to enjoy those highlights, to prepare for the future, and fulfill our duties and obligations to others in the present.
We can all get frustrated with life and the mundane and difficult tasks we have to face each day. It's important to know who we are, whose we are, and to know our very purpose.
DEAL L LARSEN (1986, "The Peaceable Things of the Kingdom")
"Some of us create such a complexity of expectations for ourselves that it is difficult to cope with the magnitude of them....when this compulsion is intensified by sources outside ourselves, the problem is compounded. Everyone needs to feel successful and worthy in some ways at least part of the time.
Overzealousness is at least as much to be feared as apathy. Trying to measure up to too many particular expectations without some sense of self-tolerance can cause spiritual and emotional "burn-out."
"Displaying our humanness does not count against us."
BRIGHAM YOUNG, 31 Aug 1854, 37, Deseret News Weekly
"We all occupy diversified stations in the world, and in the kingdom of God. Those who do right, and seek the glory of the Father in heaven , whether their knowledge be little or much, or whether they can do little or much, if they do the very best they know how, they are perfect....Be as perfect as ye can, for that is all we can do."
BRUCE R. McCONKIE, The Probationary Test of Mortality pp 11-13
"You don't need to get a complex or get a feeling that you have to be perfect to be saved. You don't." I'm not saying that you don't have to keep the commandments. I'm saying you don't have to be perfect to be saved. If you did, no one would be saved. What you have to do is get on the straight and narrow path - thus charting a course leading to eternal life - and then, being on that path, pass out of this life in full fellowship. This life is the time that is given to prepare for eternity."
"What you have to do is.....live as upright and decent people...keeping the commandments, paying your tithing, serving in the organizations of the church, loving the Lord, staying on the straight and narrow path....for all intents and purposes, your calling and election is made sure."
BOYD K PACKER, That all May Be Edified, 94
"We live in a day when the adversary stresses on every hand the philosophy of instant gratification. We seem to demand instant everything, including instant solutions to our problems. We are indoctrinated that somehow we should always be instantly emotionally comfortable. When that is not so, some become anxious. It was meant to be that life would be a challenge. To suffer some anxiety, some depression, some disappointment even some failure is normal. Teach our members that if they have a good miserable day every once in a while, or several in a row, to stand steady and face them. Things will straighten out. There is great purpose in our struggle in life."
D. W. J. MARSH, BYU Devotional Speeches, March 14, 1989
"Perfection is not something we "do" in this life - it is something we become in the next. It is to become more like Christ, more kind, more compassionate, more caring. Here we lay the foundation. In the next life, we put on the capstone. But Christ is always the cornerstone. Perfection is not manifest in outward appearances, but in the quiet, almost imperceptible changes of the heart."
NEAL A MAXWELL, Not My Will, p 127
There is a difference between stumbling along the pathway to perfection even as we display our humanness, and wandering about aimlessly in a desert of despair and disbelief."
GORDAN B HINKLEY, 1990, 2002
"I certainly make no pretense of being perfect, nor do any of my brethren. There was only one perfect man who ever walked the earth. The Lord has used imperfect people in the process of building His perfect society. If some of them occasionally stumble, of if their characters may have been slightly flawed in one way or another, the wonder is the greater that they accomplished so much."
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