Perfectly Imperfect

Today our Relief Society had a special 2 hour long mother's day meeting, including a slide-show and strawberry short-cake.  It was wonderful.  The theme was Perfectly Imperfect and I was asked to speak about the topic in a way that made the women in attendance feel ok with accepting their own imperfect journey.   It was supposed to be fun and lighthearted and put people at ease, specifically those moms who are feeling like they are just never enough.  

PERFECTLY IMPERFECT:  Mother’s Day RS talk May 14, 2017

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in.    —leanard cohen.

This is an excerpt from my family blog from Mother’s Day 2011:

 At church the kids were perfect angels!  Campbell only tried to escape about 40 times.  Layla bit each sister.  There were goldfish everywhere.  Brother Williams, sitting closest to us on the bench, got kicked repeatedly.  Oh, and Layla chucked her shoe, which bounced off of Brother Smith's forehead and somehow landed three rows back in a teenage boy's hands!  The kids were so crazy, Spencer and I didn't even notice the shoe thing.  Reports trickled in after the meeting ended.

Interestingly, that was 6 years ago, and if I had written a summary of every Sunday since then, they would all sound eerily similar, right up until today.

Let me tell you about another Sunday, one a few months before that same Mother’s Day:

 At a stake conference a visiting authority got up to speak.  I will never forget his message.  He spoke of a new mother, who found that with one child it now took her until 9 am to complete her daily household tasks.  And then in time she had another, and found that, with 2 children, it now took her until 10 am to complete her work. He continued to enumerate each additional child until at 8 children she found that it took her all the way until dinner time to complete her work each day.

 I have no idea what the point of this talk was.  All I know is that I had 3 children and I had never once known what it felt like to “complete my work”.  And I had 3 children that were currently trying to dismantle the cultural hall while I desperately tried to not click my heels while chasing them and shushing them.  By the end of his story I scooped up my little girls, ran to a dark room, and sobbed.  To say I felt deflated wouldn’t quite begin to cover it. 

During that time I ended most of my days feeling completely exhausted, and yet, to look around, you would have no idea what I did all day.  There was no physical evidence that I was doing anything worthwhile, and yet, I could barely see straight by the time the kids were asleep.  Ok, that part is still true in my current life. 

But during that time that was so discouraging to me.  I felt like all day I chose which guilt to feel—do I feel guilty for ignoring the kids to get the dishes done, or guilty for having a messy smelly kitchen so that I can read to the kids? Do I feel guilty that I had to get mean to get the kids to eat their broccoli or guilty that I was too lenient and they’ll have unhealthy pregnancies because they’re not getting enough greens?  I was swimming in mom guilt and exhaustion and a list of to do’s that I could never possibly keep up with, and then came that stake conference talk.  And you know what it did?  It got us talking, me and the new mom friends I was making—talking about how we all felt during that talk.  About how we all felt like we were drowning and that we could never be enough and that we were so far from “super mom”.   And knowing that we all felt that way, something magical happened—we all started to feel less that way.  And we all started to feel more comfortable letting each other see our imperfections.  And letting them be seen took away their power over us.  And that gave us room to look around at who needed our offerings, imperfections and all.  And now my motto is this: I show up.  I don’t have anything amazing to offer except that I am willing. And willingness is just as important as any talent.  “Ring the Bells that Still Can Ring. Forget your perfect offering”

Just in case any of you are still feeling like Mother’s Day is the yearly reminder that you are as far from “Super Mom” as can be, I’ll share a few more excerpts from my blog:  Yesterday I took Campbell and Cadence with me to visit a friend from church.  As we talked, I noticed a strange calm and my spider senses were tingling like crazy.  I stood up and ran around the whole house looking for Campbell.  I ran outside and couldn't find her.  I told Cadence to open every door in the house and yell campbell's name as loud as she could.  Then the three adults ran around the neighborhood looking.  I was panicking.  Bad guys, cars, ditches, pools, mean dogs, my mind was racing.  Saeng found her 4 houses down in the back yard on a little swingset back there!  Ah!  My heart was about to explode.

she was so angry when I took her away from the swingset that she screamed the whole way and as I buckled her into her carseat she scratched my arm up pretty bad. And I lectured her over and over again about why that was not acceptable.  After a couple go-rounds of the what-fer, she said in an emotionally heavy, quieted (so unusual) tone, "But Mom, don't you love me?"  and I got right in her face and told her that I loved her and that was why I was so worried about her.  Her reply was in a much more assertive tone: "But I DON"T LIKE YOU."  Oh, thank you for clearing that up.

Here's another one, in case you feel the pressure to look good while totally winning at life (it’s important to know that I was also pregnant in my 1^st trimester so I was extra low on energy and regular clothes weren’t looking great on me):

-Last week was a really really exhausting one for everybody. We spent Mon-Wed moving moving moving. Nothing but moving.  Then we spent three days in the car. You know what road trips are like, right? I wear comfortable clothes, my hair gets all crazy looking, and I really don't care.
So on our final day on the road, we stopped at an Arby's off of the freeway near OK City. It was hot and humid, we were tired and anxious to just get to our final destination. After lunch we all hit the bathrooms and I found that there was no changing table in sight. A mother's option at that point is the ground. I have had to pull this move many times. I always feel weird about it because it's not very private, I don't know how many gross-o's have spit on the grass or worse, etc. Anyway, I found a spot of grass shaded by the Arby's sign and I dropped my backpack to the ground and got to work. Right after I exposed Campbell completely, I noticed that the guy stopped at the light just next to us was staring. "Come on, Perv, she's just a baby!" I thought to myself. I became even more annoyed by Pervert McGee when the light changed and somebody behind him had to honk to get his attention. Anyway, I wrapped things up and as I stood and gathered my things, I noticed Pervert McGee pulled up in his truck next to me in the parking lot. I was alarmed. He rolled down his window and asked so sincerely, " Do you need money?"

I think he was pretty embarrassed when I explained that we were just passing through town on a long road trip and that I was just fine. And then it hit me. I looked homeless. And I really really did. A sad, homeless redheaded mother, just trying to find a place to stop and take care of my baby.

I’m going to switch gears because I want to talk about my favorite thing about imperfection: Imperfection is our invitation to access The Atonement of Jesus Christ.  We are taught that the Atonement of Jesus Christ is to cover sin, suffering, weakness, you name it.  So when I hear the line, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”, I hear, “ that’s how Christ shines his light on us t make us whole.”  This also means that when I get all wound up thinking about how what I just said to my daughter is probably going to give her issues and she’s not going to have a healthy response to stressors in life because of how I just spoke to her about the way she stepped right on top of her own things like they were the paving stones intead of picking them up and putting them away---  I can calm myself down because what I’m really saying is that I’m giving her a reason to need to turn to the Lord and ask for help and healing.  Then I high-five myself for that and think of better ways to address the issue of the things on the floor.

Elder Orson F. Whitney wrote: “No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude, and humility. … It is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire.”¹

^{So, yeah, I might not} be a perfect parent.  I think none of us can avoid giving our kids issues somewhere along the line.  But the “Grace of God is sufficient” to make that a strength unto them.  

That is the perfection of imperfection.  That all our flaws, our mistakes, our sins, they can be used to bring us to Christ.   All the pain that we cause ourselves and others because of weakness of the flesh—there is a crack in everything, that’s how the Light of Christ gets in.

I hope that you can look at your own flaws and struggles today with loving eyes.  I hope that you can see you the way your Heavenly Parents do today, a perfectly loveable child who needs her Savior whether her kids have matching socks and are on time to practice, or not.  Happy Mothers Day!  Amen