The Way to Sure Success

We are commanded to be perfect.  Sometimes that seems to be a goal beyond our reach, and we can become discouraged.  I'd like to pass on a thought I've had about our need to be patient with ourselves...

http://www.practicingparents.com

Babies, children, toddlers are wonderful!  They try, and try, and fall or fail, and try again, until they 'get it'.  We know that eventually, they will walk, talk, toilet themselves, say 'Mummy, I love you'; even learn to ride a bike, swim across the pool, and read by themselves.  Eventually, their toes will touch the floor while they are sitting on the pew in church; their fingers will eventually reach the doorknob, the top of the doorway, (and sometimes, in the case of teenage boys straining to be picked for the basketball team), the ceiling.  These things will all, in the normal course of life, always be achieved.   

Babies don't ever ponder the possibility of failure.  It just never seems to occur to them.  So they keep trying, until they do advance; achieve; succeed.  And we take their eventual success just as much for granted - we know that their destiny is to be successful in these things.  

Little Ballerina's Dream painting by Roberta Martin

To look at a newborn baby or a small child, it could seem incredible that they will be able to accomplish so many intricate, fabulous things one day.  Except that we know what is possible, and probable, because we have already managed it ourselves.  How sad it would be for us to ever see a baby just give up on trying - to walk, or talk, or feed themselves, knowing as we do know, the progress that would have occurred if they had just continued their efforts.   

I wonder if this is the way that Heavenly Father looks upon us in our struggle to become like Him.  He sees us fall over, again and again, and I think that His response probably somewhat mirrors our response to our own children: a warm and vitally interested desire to encourage and support, and a feeling of overwhelming love for the child: walking or not; successful or..  not just yet.  Perhaps He loves us in the same way that we love our babies, even when they can't do anything much yet!  Perhaps He smiles understandingly, as we occasionally do, when the baby who is learning to sit up, puddles over onto their side, or sometimes falls flat on their face, or even occasionally throws a tantrum.  Maybe it really doesn't bother Him that much that it takes us a while to learn what we need to learn - since He knows that eventually, with His help, we will, inevitably, succeed. As long as we don't give up.

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I remember with love and humour the picture of our oldest daughter, Tammy, attempting to learn a piano piece for her Beginner's exam.  I think she was about seven.  She sat at our piano each day, plonking out a few simple notes, trying over and over again to play the childish tune, before one day throwing her hands to her eyes and crying, with real anguish, "I can't do it, I just can't do it!  I'll NEVER be able to learn this - it's too hard!"   

Fast forward to her seventeenth year, to the exceptionally lengthy and difficult music pieces I heard her practise then, in preparation for her Diploma of Music exam.  How beautiful it was to hear her filling our home with such intricate and lovely melodies.

How wonderful to know that our own stumbling, occasionally faltering, and even sometimes emotionally hysterical attempts now to sound a tune, are one day, most certainly, if we 'continue in patience', destined to become performances of great beauty too.



By Sandy Munro