Rely on Him

I was sitting at a Stake Relief Society meeting last night. We were asked this question by the speaker; "What are the barriers to your coming unto the Savior?"We discussed with the ladies around us and came up with 'not enough time and busyness' being our barriers to being close to the Savior. I continued to think. I thought about what we are busy doing. We are busy being wives and mothers, working, and going to school. So, we are doing God's work. This is what He wants us to be doing and yet we are too busy doing it to feel close to Him. I continued thinking and writing about it last night. I talked to Chris about it.

It seems crazy to think we are too busy doing God's work to include Him in the work that He wants us to be doing!!

So, now ladies I think the real questions we need to be asking are: How do we include Him in our busy days as we go to work, go to school, or care for our little children? How do we make this truly His work and His glory?

I've been reading a book about self esteem. I believe it is called, "The myth of self-esteem." In it, the author talks of how it really isn't about our abilities or inabilities at all. It is really about the Savior and inviting Him and all that He is into our lives, so we can be who He needs us to be. We really can't be who He needs us to be without Him.

This story comes from a talk from Elder Holland that I love entitled "Because she is a Mother."

"One young mother wrote to me recently that her anxiety tended to come on three fronts. One was that whenever she heard talks on LDS motherhood, she worried because she felt she didn’t measure up or somehow wasn’t going to be equal to the task. Second, she felt like the world expected her to teach her children reading, writing, interior design, Latin, calculus, and the Internet—all before the baby said something terribly ordinary, like “goo goo.” Third, she often felt people were sometimes patronizing, almost always without meaning to be, because the advice she got or even the compliments she received seemed to reflect nothing of the mental investment, the spiritual and emotional exertion, the long-night, long-day, stretched-to-the-limit demands that sometimes are required in trying to be and wanting to be the mother God hopes she will be.

But one thing, she said, keeps her going: “Through the thick and the thin of this, and through the occasional tears of it all, I know deep down inside I am doing God’s work. I know that in my motherhood I am in an eternal partnership with Him. I am deeply moved that God finds His ultimate purpose and meaning in being a parent, even if some of His children make Him weep.

“It is this realization,” she says, “that I try to recall on those inevitably difficult days when all of this can be a bit overwhelming. Maybe it is precisely our inability and anxiousness that urge us to reach out to Him and enhance His ability to reach back to us. Maybe He secretly hopes we will be anxious,” she said, “and will plead for His help. Then, I believe, He can teach these children directly, through us, but with no resistance offered. I like that idea,” she concludes. “It gives me hope. If I can be right before my Father in Heaven, perhaps His guidance to our children can be unimpeded. Maybe then it can be His work and His glory in a very literal sense.”

You can’t possibly do this alone, but you do have help. The Master of Heaven and Earth is there to bless you—

Rely on Him. Rely on Him heavily. Rely on Him forever.

And “press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope.” You are doing God’s work. You are doing it wonderfully well. He is blessing you and He will bless you, even—no, especially—when your days and your nights may be the most challenging. Like the woman who anonymously, meekly, perhaps even with hesitation and some embarrassment, fought her way through the crowd just to touch the hem of the Master’s garment, so Christ will say to the women who worry and wonder and sometimes weep over their responsibility as mothers, “Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole.” And it will make your children whole as well. Elder Holland

So, ladies!

How in the busyness of all that we are doing do we keep our focus on the Savior?

How do we get rid of the barriers that separate us from His love and His guidance?

amber (and how do I get rid of this blasted underline!!!)