Skip to main content

Nobody's Perfect

(Please excuse the Hannah Montana song title. I couldn't stop myself!)

There was a time that I thought I had to be perfect all the time. There are still days when I do not feel like I am enough. I feel like as a member of the church, sometimes we are expected to be perfect. We are given a lot of expectations and if I fail at even one of them, then I must be failing my Heavenly Father, right? Wrong. I feel like as we have feel like we must be perfect, we feel like others are judging us if we are not. I felt that a lot in high school. I felt like if I didn't do everything right 100% of the time then my peers would judge me and my faith. I felt like I could not make a mistake because everyone was watching. But WHO CARES?

We weren't sent to this earth to be perfect. If we had, then we would be living Satan's plan. But we are not. We have agency. We came here to "take chances, make mistakes, and get messy" (is it bad to quote Ms. Frizzle in a semi-serious blog post?). Anyway. We were sent her to make mistakes. We were sent here to be tested and to learn from those mistakes. So why do we often feel the need to be perfect? Often in my faith we are told to be like Jesus. He is perfect--so shouldn't we be?


This has been an idea that I have been thinking about a lot recently. A couple days ago, I made some mistakes and hurt a good friend. I am not perfect. I do not claim to be. I make mistakes every single day. So coming back to the idea that we are supposed to be like our Savior, how is it that we make mistakes every single day?

As I had been pondering this, this idea came up in a discussion today in my Doctrine and Covenants class. (Side note, if you have not taken D&C from Brother Esplin, you should...he is AMAZING!). Anyway, so we were reading from Section 76 and Brother Esplin read this verse to the class:
"Those are they who are just men made perfect through Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, who wrought out this perfect atonement through the shedding of his own blood." (D&C 76:69).
We had been talking about the Celestial Kingdom and for those of you who don't know what this is it is basically the highest kingdom of Heaven to put it simply. (Check out this website for more information.)From this scripture, it tells us that we do not have to BE perfect to get into the Celestial Kingdom, but we have to be MADE perfect. We can be perfected through the atonement of our Savior. We do make mistakes, but Christ already paid the price for them.

Please don't get me wrong. I am not saying that we can just throw the towel into the center of the ring and do anything that we want in the world. We still have to try, but we do not have to be exactly perfect just yet.

In Institute today, we also talked about the Fall of Adam and Eve. During this discussion, again I thought about how Heavenly Father knew that we would not be perfect. He knows that we make mistakes. We are His children and He loves us, so He put a plan in place to help us in our imperfections. He sent His Son to atone for us.

So in our mortal state, we cannot be perfect, but we can be perfected. We can repent for our mistakes through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I am so grateful to know this. I am so incredibly grateful to have access to this wonderful gift from our Father.


I am not perfect. I do not have to be perfect. I am okay with that.

This is my life!
Come what may and love it!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Freshman Mentoring?

You want me to be honest? I really have no idea what Freshman Mentoring is or what it is good for. But it is required, so I have to do it. I had to sign up for a 'bundle'. The first bundle I signed up for was just a general writing class. I am actually very excited for it! I hope that it won't be too hard, but I also hope that I learn a lot. Oh, and did I mention that it is at 8 am! Sigh...I think this will actually be better in the long run. Hopefully... The second bundle I signed up for was suggested for elementary education majors. It combines biology and human development. Basically, all that means is a lot of people will be in both classes with me. I am excited for this, so that I will be get to know people with the same major. Also, I think these will be some of my favorite classes. I am actually excited that my college schedule is forming. It makes me so excited to see my future falling into place. CRAZY!

Lily- Your Birth Story

I love reading birth stories. And I love being able to look back at my birth stories to remember the little details. Here are my past birth stories: Mitch's Birth Story Nate's Birth Story Every birth is so unique, but having a baby in the middle of a pandemic is completely different. With that- on to my 3rd birth story... Lily Girl- We were so excited to have you join our family. We were excited to have little pink socks and little dresses in our home. But let me tell you- your pregnancy was the absolute hardest for me compared to the boys. Let me start at the beginning... We found out we were pregnant in January. We were so excited. The week that I found out that I was pregnant, I started experiencing severe cramps on one side. I was so worried for a ectopic pregnancy or another miscarriage. I called the doctor and was asked to come in for some blood tests. I went in and found out my numbers were on the lower normal end. They sent me in for a ultrasound to rule out an ectopic ...

Mitch- Your Birth Story

When I was pregnant, I was obsessed with reading other’s birth stories. Now, I feel like it is only fair that I write one of my own.   To Mitch-   It is ironic that you were born the week of the April General Conference. A year earlier- your father and I had received the inspiration that we needed to start trying to have a child much earlier than we had originally planned. We followed Heavenly Father’s counsel and had faith that it would work out. Now we have you! Your due date was March 24, 2016. I thought you would come early, but you apparently had other ideas. You decided to come late.  Every morning that week, I would wake up and check to see if my water had broke. Every morning, I was disappointed. I went into work on the 25 th and it was one of the most miserable days because I didn’t expect to be there. You silly goose! You kept us guessing from the very beginning. Your dad and I went into my doctor’s appointment on the 25 th . I still had not made any progr...