This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Afternoon Session of the April 2011 Conference.
It was so hard to choose what to write about for this session! I felt like so many of the talks were particularly hard-hitting and doctrinal. I know I've talked before about Bruce Hafen's three-stage model of growth (though I can't at the moment find any posts about it here??). I have found this to be so true and so helpful that it's become a permanent part of my worldview. I think about it all the time. Here is the gist of it:
Stage One of our model is the simplicity on this side of complexity, innocent and untested. Stage Two is complexity, the gap between the real and the ideal, where we struggle with conflicts and uncertainty. Stage Three is the simplicity beyond complexity, a settled and informed perspective that has been tempered and tested by time and experience.
I think I relate to it so much because I am so heavily in "Stage Two" of motherhood, I have to cling desperately to the belief that there will be a Stage Three! And all the quotes that speak to me most seem to either reinforce the fact that I need Stage Two in order to grow, or to give hope that Stage Three will come to help me make sense of everything I'm discouraged about now. So here is one of my favorite thinkers, Elder Lynn G. Robbins, about our need to struggle to become like God:
A sweet and obedient child will enroll a father or mother only in Parenting 101. If you are blessed with a child who tests your patience to the nth degree, you will be enrolled in Parenting 505. Rather than wonder what you might have done wrong in the premortal life to be so deserving, you might consider the more challenging child a blessing and opportunity to become more godlike yourself. With which child will your patience, long-suffering, and other Christlike virtues most likely be tested, developed, and refined? Could it be possible that you need this child as much as this child needs you?
I also loved this:
Our children are God’s children. That is their true identity and potential. His very plan is to help His children overcome mistakes and misdeeds and to progress to become as He is. Disappointing behavior, therefore, should be considered as something temporary, not permanent—an act, not an identity.
And this:
Or as a parent, when can I check a child off my list as done? We are never done being good parents. And to be good parents, one of the most important things we can teach our children is how to be more like the Savior. Christlike to be’s cannot be seen, but they are the motivating force behind what we do, which can be seen. When parents help a child learn to walk, for example, we see parents doing things like steadying and praising their child. These do’s reveal the unseen love in their hearts and the unseen faith and hope in their child’s potential. Day after day their efforts continue—evidence of the unseen be’s of patience and diligence.
Then dear Elder Holland gets right to the heart of what I'm feeling, the struggle and the hope:
Obviously as the path of discipleship ascends, that trail gets ever more narrow until we come to that knee-buckling pinnacle of the sermon of which Elder Christofferson just spoke: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” What was gentle in the lowlands of initial loyalty becomes deeply strenuous and very demanding at the summit of true discipleship.
The hard thing about "Stage Two" is that even knowing it's Stage Two doesn't really help anything. The uncertainty, the thinking "Maybe this time it really won't work out, maybe this time there really is nothing better ahead—", the not being sure if this even IS Stage Two or just the Real Reality you always feared—all of those things feel real and are the very definition of Stage Two confusion. You know that if wise, experienced, faithful Elder Holland is talking about life being "deeply strenuous and very demanding," he isn't kidding. That's where discipleship is supposed to take us, and what it's supposed to be. The comforting part is that Heavenly Father planned for it, Jesus Christ walks the path with us, and the Holy Ghost can strengthen us to endure it. Our uncertainty and struggle isn't a sign of failure, but of progress. That makes my Stage Two feel (a little) easier, if I can just remember it!
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