This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week we’re covering the general women’s session of the October 1988 General Conference.
I enjoyed the slight tinge of irony in reading the talks from the general women’s session on Father’s Day. This irony was compounded a little bit when I realized that the talk begining with “I have prepared my message especially for you ten- and eleven-year-old girls.” was the one that I found the most personally relevant. That would be Sister Michaelene P. Grassli’s talk, I Will Follow God’s Plan for Me.
One idea that I liked was this one:
as I have studied the word righteousness, I have found nothing that indicates that being righteous is being perfect. Goodness, virtue, morality are all dictionary synonyms, but not perfect. All of us will make mistakes in our lives, but although perfection is our ultimate destination, righteousness, or goodness, is the chariot to carry us there.
There’s a ton to unpack there. For starters, the healthy repudiation of perfectionism. Perfection, at least the way we tend to think about in America, is often about the lack of fault. If something is perfect, than it is unblemished. This is a kind of disturbingly negative definition. Perfection, in this sense, isn’t really that great of a thing to worry about.
There’s an alternate conception of perfection, though, which has to do with wholeness. It’s not about the bad things you avoid, but about the good things you enact.
You can take this too far and buy into an idea that if you do good things they excuse bad things. That’s not what I’m suggesting. But, in general, I think placing a little less emphasis on avoidance of bad things and a little more emphasis on attraction to good things is warranted. It’s like that quotes about ships being safe in the harbor: a ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are made for.
Similarly, we didn’t come to earth to avoid making mistakes. That’s part of what we should do, but in the pursuit of accomplishing good things. And that’s what Sister Grassli is encouraging us to do: embrace goodness, virtue, morality and let perfection come in its own due time.
Another quote that really struck me is this one:
Every good thing you do in your life is following God’s plan. Every time you are kind to another person, each time you have courage to do something difficult, each time you do a thoughtful act without being asked, each time you say your prayers, each time you read the scriptures, each time you go to church, each time you help a friend—you are following God’s plan for you.
This goes to the idea that we’re here for action. We’re here to do things.
And it also takes away from toxic perfectionism. Sometimes we can get paralyzed by wanting to do the best thing or find God’s one true purpose for us.
We all have missions to accomplish in this life, and there are probably some things that we can do that nobody else could do. Our actions matter. There are real consequences, for ourselves and other people. If we don’t do the thing, the thing (in most cases) will not get done. And that’s bad.
But it’s at least as bad–and probably much, much worse–to pass up on one good opportunity after another because you’re trying to find the perfect one. If there’s a mission for you, then I really don’t think God is going to let you miss it if you’re out there striving to do good in small ways. Work hard, listen out for promptings, do your best, and God’s plan will unfold through your life.
Don’t wait to see it and then act it out.
Live your best life and then, in retrospect, I believe you’ll see how the plan unfolded through little acts that added up to something bigger than you realized at the time.
So maybe it was Father’s Day and this was the women’s session, and maybe Sister Grassli had tweens in mind when she wrote the talk, but I went ahead and likened them unto me.
Other posts from this week’s General Conference Odyssey: