A couple of years ago a friend of mine gave me these cute little sheep figurines. She thought they were perfect for me. The little card that came with them said "who wants to be just another one of the herd? Look at Barley the Black Sheep. He's not baaaashful at all. Aidan, Liam and Finn prefer to flock together, but Barley's proud to stand out. What about ewe?" Wah wah wah. I like to place him in the middle of the herd to bust up those flockers ;)
I've talked about my "black sheep" tendencies here on my blog before. Shoot, I'm the Alex P Keaton of my family to which everyone believes me a traitor to my roots. To top it off, I was the only one to join a different religion. I know a little something about going against the grain. The comment I hear most from people that pretty much sums this personality trait up is "you say what everyone is thinking but don't have the guts to say." Yep that's me, always willing to look the fool if I feel it serves a purpose.
As evidence by my musings on here, I have recently been struggling with my spiritual odd man out feelings. Here's what I can't figure out.
How to measure success.
I have realized that that is what I am really struggling with. I want to be part of "hastening the work" but I can't, for the life of me, figure out how…..in a way that I can measure. Most specifically it is in the calling that I have. I just did an activity where I used a video with President Monson talking about sugar beets. It is really inspiring and then another short video about a girl that befriended an inactive girl. I'm telling you, the church is getting really good at these videos. I have been using them more and more because they are great conversation starters…..when I can actually get any participation. Anyway my favorite take home message of the sugar beet video was this, we will most of the time feel like absolute failures, but we have to remember that we are working on the Lord's timetable, not ours. On the surface that doesn't sound very inspiring, but let me tell you, it is.
I've been doing a whole lot of reading lately. I just finished the New Testament….a little yea for myself. I also just read 'what would a holy woman do' and I'm currently reading 'women in the priesthood' we also listened to a bunch of talks on cd by John Bytheway traveling to arizona and I am "stopping by" every so often in the book 'the power of everyday missionaries' (there is just other great stuff holding my interest better…so many good books waiting in my virtual bookshelf begging me to read them, like 3 from Elder Holland and another from Bednar and one about the temple by Wilcox. All deliciousness to my soul.
Here's the thing about reading all of those books. I feel like I've been given this big ole tool box full of great stuff. The only problem is that I don't know how to use any of them. Most of the time I feel like I pull a tool out and then say something like, "I know this does something pretty cool, if I only knew what that was." How completely frustrating!
So back to measuring success. With the work hastening I've been feeling like there is too much time being wasted on inconsequential things. I am on urgency overdrive with making sure those who I have stewardship over are on their way to being converted. Problem is, what does that look like? This is where my black sheep tenancies come in because I'm the one who says things like that in front of people. I've talked about that before….everyone showing their beautiful and over willingness to say how amazing everything is. Well, I'm all about admitting the ugly so that I can work towards beautiful- true beauty…. Anywho, I know I don't have the power to convert anyone. All I have to rely upon is the Holy Ghost so that I can be an instrument in the hands of the Lord. When that is your only guide, it's easy to start blaming your perceived idea of success on your lack of abilities to be in tune….ps there is a book with that as a title….maybe I should check into that.
I'm beginning to understand how truly inspired it was for me to teach the lesson I did for seminary when I got sick. Sometimes a light turns on very slowly……btw, there's a great video by Bednar about light and revelation. I was looking at the lesson from the perspective of what the kids in the class needed and then through further pondering later, realized there was a lesson for me there as well.
Now the tricky part….how much back story and how much to the point? I don't want to overcomplicate and over scripturalize this point….leaving something for the active learner to discover on their own. I'm going to give it a whirl.
It all starts with the sons of Mosiah. They were out causing problems for the church. They were actively trying to deceive members. An angel appeared to them. They were converted. They decided to be missionaries so they could repair the damage they had done. That part of the story is found in Mosiah 27.
The next part of the story is about 2 of those sons. Ammon and Aaron. Ammon goes to Ishmael and meets King Lamoni. We hear about how he was a rockstar missionary and the ripple effect he had starting with the king, the queen, Abish and lots of other people converting to the gospel. Meanwhile Aaron is in Middoni and getting mocked and imprisoned. You could say that he was not having a successful mission and that perhaps he was the black sheep of the band of brothers. In Alma 20:29 we learn something about what they were going through.
29 And when Ammon did meet them he was exceedingly sorrowful, for behold they were naked, and their skins were worn exceedingly because of being bound with strong cords. And they also had asuffered hunger, thirst, and all kinds of afflictions; nevertheless they were bpatient in all their sufferings.
I love what Ammon says about it in verse 30.
30 And, as it happened, it was their lot to have fallen into the hands of a more hardened and a more astiffnecked people; therefore they would not hearken unto their words, and they had cast them out, and had smitten them, and had driven them from house to house, and from place to place, even until they had arrived in the land of Middoni; and there they were taken and cast into prison, and bound with bstrong cords, and kept in prison for many days, and were delivered by Lamoni and Ammon.
Here's what I got out of this story. There are lots of "Ammon's" out there having great success. That's what we get to hear about…..because it's inspiring and it's possible. Some of us get to have "Aaron" experiences. Why, because that's where we are needed. Someone's got to have them. The Lord measures success very differently than we do. I believe he is trying to break through my thick skull and help me understand this. He keeps finding little ways to tell me, "that's great, but here's what I actually need you to do."
I do get little moments where the Lord let's me see success in ways I want to measure instead of his ways, because he loves me and knows that I don't fully understand all of his ways yet. He works within the framework of each of our understanding.
We had an activity wed night that I wasn't in charge of, but was a really great activity. After one of our yw taught us yoga and another leader talked about being healthy it was time to start talking about spiritual health. We did Virtue 4 from pp together.
Because the Savior loves you and has given His life for you, you can repent. Repentance is an act of faith in Jesus Christ. Read Moroni 10:32–33, the book of Enos, and the section on repentance in For the Strength of Youth. The Savior’s atoning sacrifice has made it possible for you to be forgiven of your sins. Read the sacrament prayers in Doctrine and Covenants 20:77, 79. Determine to partake worthily of the sacrament each week and fill your life with virtuous activities that will bring spiritual power. As you do this, you will grow stronger in your ability to resist temptation, keep the commandments, and become more like Jesus Christ. Determine what you can do daily to remain pure and worthy, and write your plan in your journal.
Here's the cool thing that happened. One of our Laurels brought 2 friends with her. They all got divided into different groups for the pp portion. I decided to go to a group with one of the girls so she could have some help. I've been trying to implement all the things I've been learning about teaching and so I never let a scripture be read without discussing it…..which can get some eye rolls…especially when there is a lot of reading to pass off the goal and we only had 20 minutes. I wanted learning to happen so I stuck with the higher method. I helped the friend find the places she needed in the BOM and asked her to participate with the reading and she was the first one to raise her hand to answer questions about repentance and what godliness means. It was so awesome I almost started crying….but I had to play it cool. That was the measure of success I had been searching for. The introspection of the students and an eagerness to participate. I noticed that she also kept flipping through the pages of the BOM, I'm sure out of curiosity. We had one of my favorite laurels join us towards the end of the discussion (because this is public I don't want to reveal the name but I want enough clues that can trigger my memory years down the road…so I will identify her as the no-poo ginger) When we talked about Enos she piped in and said it was one of her favorite books. I almost went into -fill the void teacher word vomit - to state my opinion and luckily stopped myself and asked her why. So glad I did!
After that evening all I could think about was how to get a BOM into that friends hands. I'm sure I will find a way wether it's me suggesting to the Laurel that brought her that she do it or having one ready to give her the next time she comes. What is funny is that my daughter was also in that group. The first thing she said to me when we got in the car? We've got to find a way to get that girl a BOM.
My favorite no-poo ginger and the friend of another were not my successes that night. But I got to be apart of higher spiritual learning when I got out of the way and let the Holy Ghost do his job. It was enough to keep me going through all the other times when I feel like beating my head against the wall because surely I'm doing something wrong to warrant a complete lack of my perception of success.
Hopefully this all made sense because, I of course, am doubting myself. But the take home message is this. Who did the Lord love more, Ammon or Aaron? Is being a black sheep a bad thing? If you can't answer that, I didn't do my job. I had a dream a couple years ago about letting go. I seem to keep forgetting that lesson ( I got a great reminder 2 weeks ago though). I need to let go and let God fulfill his plan that he will let me be apart of if I seek to do his will. I also need to stop worrying about how I define success because it's not my work, it's His, and he knows exactly what he's doing.
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