evaluating my efforts in my most important work

I joke around sometimes that I am searching for a good boarding school for my 8-year old son (my oldest).  But... sometimes I really wonder if he would do better, thrive better, without me.  Sometimes I feel like I have done such a poor job at guiding and instructing him that I just want to hide underneath a rock.  And sometimes, I wonder if I have messed up so badly at teaching him that I can never fix it - no matter how hard I try.

As I was writing this post realized that it was too much of a "downer" to ever post it.  Then I started looking at a random blog that I bookmarked a long time ago.  I found this post: Hey Moms! Quit Being So Hard On Yourself!  It was divine intervention.  It was the message I needed - in a moment of hopelessness.  I watched the video clip over and over, and just cried.

It surprises me over and over again how difficult parenting is.

But then I remember how perfect Heavenly Father's plan is, and that it is referred to as: The Plan of Happiness.

We do not have to be, in fact we are not supposed to be, perfect once we become parents.  Rather, the most important part of Heavenly Father's plan is for us to create families, relationships, and experience life, learn and grow together as we parent our children - His children - with His help.

Last General Conference, Sister Stevens quoted Elder Ballard saying: "... we should see and appreciate [children] for who they really are: spirit children of our Heavenly Father, with divine attributes."  Sister Stevens then continues: "Home is a place where we can all learn and grow together...  It is here in our families, in an atmosphere of love, where we see and appreciate in a more personal way the divine attributes of His spirit children.  It is here in our families where our hearts can be softened and in humility we desire to change, to become more childlike.  It is a process by which we can become more Christlike."

I love it.  It's perfect.