Living day-to-day as a disciple

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Afternoon Session of the April 2013 Conference.

This week I have been thinking and praying about something that troubles me from time to time. It's not that I think my current stage of motherhood is unimportant; I know what I do for my family is important, and I believe in it. But sometimes I just feel so aware of how many trivial and mundane things take up my attention. I start to worry that I’m just being pulled along from deadline to deadline, from task to task, never really feeling free of the mild stress of those things that have to be done, and never really rising to any higher purpose or seeing any higher vision. I worry that "the world is too much with me" and I'm going to somehow miss what God really wants me to be doing.

So I was grateful to read several conference talks which seemed to speak to those thoughts. For example, from Elder Christofferson:

The greatest service we can provide to others in this life, beginning with those of our own family, is to bring them to Christ through faith and repentance so they may experience His Redemption...Much of our redemptive work on earth is to help others grow and achieve their just hopes and aspirations.

And this from Elder Bruce D. Porter:

Trials may come, and we may not understand everything that happens to us or around us. But if we humbly, quietly trust in the Lord, He will give us strength and guidance in every challenge we face. When our only desire is to please Him, we will be blessed with a deep inner peace.

And this from Elder Erich W. Kopischke:

Too often we think that the word sacrifice refers to something big or hard for us to do. In certain situations this may be true, but mostly it refers to living day-to-day as a true disciple of Christ.

And 

Other ways to observe our covenants by sacrifice are as simple as accepting a calling in the Church and faithfully serving in that calling or following the invitation of our prophet, Thomas S. Monson, to reach out to those who are standing at the wayside and need to be spiritually rescued. We observe our covenants by sacrifice by giving silent service in our neighborhood or community or by finding the names of our ancestors and doing temple work for them. We observe our covenants by sacrifice by simply striving for righteousness, being open, and listening to the promptings of the Spirit as we live our daily lives. Sometimes observing our covenants means nothing more than standing firmly and faithfully when the storms of life are raging all around us.