personal progress gets personal

 long story longer, six months ago i was called at the personal progress leader for our ward. a few months after that i was called as the laurels(16-18 year old girls) advisor and just a few weeks ago i was called as young women's(all girls 11-18) president in our church congregation. from the minute i was called as personal progress leader, i experienced an overwhelming level of spiritual promptings that continued to build and grow as i worked hard and transition from calling to calling. this past week was our young women in excellence program. since everyone in the previous presidency was released the week before, i was feeling incredible pressure to put together this program with my new presidency. thankfully, some sisters who are incredibly talented at event planning stepped in to help as we scrapped 90% of the previous plans and went super simple with the new event direction. my new presidency accomplished incredible things and i'm incredibly pleased with how it turned out. about 10 years ago i went to a relief society conference where the theme was "make is lovely, make it simple" and that has been my mantra ever since. 

no one likes when a meeting goes over time and so i promised everyone that it would be only and hour. we started at 7:06 because of terrible evening traffic and we ended at 7:56. no one high fived me but i believe that many people wanted to. aside from herschel pulling the fire alarm while we were setting up and one cake getting dropped on the floor by a bishopric member, everything went off without a hitch. everything was cleaned up at we were all out of there by 8:30. 

i was one of the speakers and this is my talk:

Oftentimes our society confuses achievement for worth. We are a society of recognition and awards ceremonies. That’s part of why we are here tonight. We’re all in various stages of progress and achievement. Whether you received a ribbon or medallion tonight or if you aren’t participating in personal progress is irrelevant to your worth and actual progress in life. Larry Shaw of the Grayson ward once said in a meeting that, “women have worth upon arrival”. I wrote it down and I try and remind myself of that often. My dad would always call football a game of inches, meaning that the difference between success was often the smallest thing you could do to win the game. That is true for our lives. We set large goals but the best way to achieve them to make sure you are moving forward every day, even if it’s only a few inches. When we are continually turning to Christ, we are able to make that daily progress.

All that being said, I want to share with you an experience I had last week that is based on our theme for the evening, turning to Christ. One morning last week at the gym, as I was finishing up my workout, a man that I have seen almost every morning for several years, but had never spoken to before approached me. He asked me why I was doing certain lifts a particular way and before I could even answer, he told me I was doing it all wrong and he pointed out everything I was weak at and that I didn’t know what I was doing. He then proceeded to tell me that everything I did there wasn’t making a difference and that I should be doing other exercises if I wanted to be “doing it right”. Because he was an expert and this is what “he did all the time”. As I attempted again to politely explain my methodology which is actually based on research and experience, he continued to cut me off and berate me on the gym floor. This is where I am going to tell you some things that I do every day at the gym. I listen to a conference talk and I pray that I will be kind and patient with everyone I interact with that morning because being kind and patient at the gym can be hard for me. Ironically, the talk that I listened to was “And nothing shall offend them” by Elder Bednar. At this point in my workout I was trying to not be offended by some of the vile language I hear on a regular basis there and I was extra patient as I talked to another gym patron who seems very lonely and lacks a lot of social awareness. I felt like I was doing all the right things! I don’t know why this man singled me out, but perhaps he thought I was weak or would appreciate his rude comments. I was very surprised that I was being subjected to this barrage of insults and my mind was quickly loading up all my best comebacks to put this man in his place. Imagine a giant sling shot being pulled back very tightly. Then, I had the Spirit come to my heart and tell me to be polite and simply walk away. It was really hard to do because I am good at saying mean things but I walked to my car. As soon as I got to my car, I burst into tears and cried all the way home. I got home and I cried to Thomas and he said all the right things and reassured me that I do know what I’m doing at the gym and that my studying  and practice was paying off. Then he said the words that every girl wants to hear, “I’m going to go beat that guy up right now!” And I said, “No, let’s not be like that. You hold him down and I’ll beat him up!” Then we laughed and I felt better and I considered everything over with. It was an upsetting experience but I had done what I set out to do. I was not be offended and I was kind.

However, later on that day though, the cracks started to show. I started feeling really down on myself. I consider myself to be someone who doesn’t really care too much about other people’s opinions but unkind words can still affect me. What started out as a really uncomfortable experience bloomed into negative thoughts about myself which spread to questioning whether I should just quit going to the gym altogether because I’m clearly terrible at it and my very presence was bothering people. Of course it spiraled into what a terrible parent I am, how bad I am at keeping my house clean, nobody actually likes me and various other forms of negative self-talk. It all snowballed into, “I’m not worth it!” Because I struggle with anxiety and depression, I call this type of hurtful thinking, the darkness. And when the darkness shows up, it can envelope me quickly and tightly. If you study pathology, you know that an opportunistic infection is an illness that can kill you when you’re already sick with something else. Satan is an opportunistic infection. He saw my struggle and took the opportunity to make it so much worse.

Now girls, if this happens to you often, you should definitely talk to someone and get help. There are many people here tonight who would love to help you with that. But also, you need to know that when the darkness starts to envelop you, you can turn, like a sunflower, to the Savior. Jesus Christ is the light in ANY darkness and all we need to do is seek Him out.

So before I went to bed that night, I knelt in prayer and poured out my heart to Him, that He would help me overcome this darkness that I was feeling. That I would wake up and feel like myself, the person who loves the gym and is doing her best to be a good parent and if my house is messy it actually doesn’t matter because a messy house is inevitable with creative, high-spirited children and my infinite and inherent worth is NOT BASED on anything temporal! No award of achievement can change my worth! And you know what! I did! I woke up on time, I walked in the gym like I owned the place and the Savior placed very kind people in my path. And that old, lonely man who talked my ear off the day before because I was practicing kindness told me what I great job I was doing. 

my testimony is that we can always turn to Christ and that our quest for personal progress doesn't end here but that we will always be choosing to progress inch by inch, day by day. i say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.