Having it All

For many years I have felt VERY strongly that our society teaches that we "can have it all".  I have always felt that this is a very inaccurate and damaging message to give.  I just read an article about Sister Beck, who is the General RS President in our church.  She articulated so well what I have often felt:


“Having It All”
Sister Beck believes one of the greatest myths that has been told to women is that they can have it all. “Nobody can have everything, and you especially can’t have it all at once,” she says. “There’s an opportunity cost to everything.”

So how can we know if our choices are correct? Sister Beck suggests asking questions like, “First, ‘Am I aligned behind the Lord’s plan for me? Is what I’m doing moving me toward eternal life or am I just enjoying my time in Babylon?’ I have to ask myself that all the time,” she says. “And then, ‘How do I feel? Is the Spirit confirming my choices?’ Balancing is best done by revelation. I’m surprised what I can get done in a day when I’m aligned.”

But she admits that, just like everyone else, she doesn’t always prioritize correctly. “Sometimes I miss opportunities to do important things, but I’ve learned to minimize guilt,” she says. “I used to be a very guilt-ridden person, but I’ve learned that the Lord uses many opportunities to teach me. I learn from experience when something didn’t feel good, so next time, I do it another way. Don’t carry it around your whole life.”

She continues, “I’ve learned that the world teaches us that we can have the dream now. They express the dream as what Adam and Eve had in the garden—you don’t have to work for anything and everything is peaceful and happy. That’s really where the adversary still is. But we chose to have a mortal experience to prepare for the real dream, and that dream is eternal life. Eve was willing to go through a long, hard mortal experience in order to work toward the promise of the dream—I don’t think most women realize that. They’re trying to make it be the dream now. We don’t get that here. What we get here is the experience.”

I love this statement.  I think that men and women get caught up in "reaching for their dreams" but fall short of what the "real dream is".  The one that really matters.  I sometimes confuse the two as well.  

So, Keep Dreaming. The "real" dream.