What I am and what I want to be.
My vision of my family and where we are.
My daily to do list and what actually gets done.
C.Terry Warner said at a Women's Week Lecture:
"Without being a mother I can tell you one of a mother’s deepest frustrations. You have on one hand an ideal of how family life ought to be, how the home should be ordered, how the processes of daily living need to be organized. On the other hand, the various human beings, big and little, who are supposed to conform to this ideal of yours are often uncooperative, recalcitrant, willful, independent, unresponsive, sloppy, resistant, disobedient, lazy, and sometimes even subversive or perverse." (Peace First, Then Order, BYU, April 1990)
Yes! That is it! Sabotage! The gap between the ideal and the real is what gets me down. It is all too easy to feel like it is hopeless, impossible and ridiculous. Whatever made me think for even one minute, that I could be successful at taking on the responsibility of creating family life that is rewarding, orderly and joyful? How does anyone find any success in this process?
An ideal exists. It is there. I've seen it in my mind and heart. And I've experienced enough of the ideal to know while it could drag us down, it is also the distance between real and ideal that propels me forward. The ideal is my guide, my light and my passion. Whatever minute measure of success we experience in the visionary direction is exhilarating! I see Zion with enough clarity that its very possibility lights my soul on fire. There is nothing I would rather do. There is nothing more I want. I would labor days to move three inches in that direction. But what is the nature of this labor?
After a philosophical discussion, Terry Warner states:
"Love is the power of those who harbor in their hearts no disposition to dominate. In the image of Christ they move us by their complete unwillingness to force us in any degree. The powers of heaven come to bear when a servant of God refuses to assume power over the people he serves." (Peace First, Then Order, BYU, April 1990)
I've thought and thought and thought about this. Lasting success will only come when they eventually choose order voluntarily. Any chart, program, effort, reward, punishment, whatever it is, by itself, will lack the power that love would give it. Only as I act as a being of love, in clumsy attempts to imitate Him, is the power and light available to change hearts and behavior. This puts all in the family on the agenda of doing hard things.
So I choose God for the gap. I choose His example, His light, His ideal. Closing the gap with my will and limited vision has resulted in more of the "recalcitrant" results. Only when I seek to be a being of love like He is, set limits and boundaries in my family realm like He does on earth, and repent as fast as I can have I experienced any measure of progress. I choose real and ideal. I'll live with the gap daily, celebrate the joyful moments when they come and give thanks to God.
