Competition vs. Cooperation-- Being One

I have actually started to enjoy Relief Society. I switch off teaching music to the Primary kids and taking the week off. During the long winter when kids were sick, my husband and I switched off going and my turn going was always in primary. Now we have 1 o clock church with 3 yr. old twins in nursery and a 1 yr. old baby, and my husband is still recovering from working for the church, and he is much happier the rest of the week when he doesn't attend more than sacrament meeting so it works out for us to all go to sacrament meeting and then he takes the 3 little guys home. So I have had the opportunity to go to Relief Society when it's not my turn to lead the music in primary and I am baby free so I can stay for the whole lesson. I've been surprised at how good the lessons have been even with people I don't particularly like, they have given good lessons and the Spirit has been there. It has been years since I have enjoyed Relief Society. It is a welcome change. It has also given me an opportunity to think about some things and even to share a comment in class, but I have so much more to say and think about, I'll share it here or at least the main idea so I don't forget. So the lesson today was on being one, one in the gospel and one in Relief Society. This particular teacher handled an issue I had with her YW activity very poorly. Instead of reaching out to me to explain any misunderstanding on my part or trying to understand my concern, she replied to my email and basically told me that I misunderstood the activity and that I should not complain about anything. So I was not excited to be there, but she is a talented teacher and she had a lot of discussion questions and some good quotes and it ended up being very interesting. So she started off asking what being one means and there were some good comments about loving each other and how charity is the bottom line, and then the discussion somehow lead to how she is a perfectionist and when she was on her missin her mission president sat her down and told her that she was going to have a very hard life if she couldn't be happy bless things were perfect and if she was always second guessing herself an beating herself up for not doing better. So she wanted everyone in the room to know that they are good enough and they are trying hard enough. One sister mentioned how she didn't have the perfectionist problem until she joined the church at age 20, but that she has learned that we just have to be clean and trying, not actually perfect and that the atonement works. Everybody laughed at the perfectionist comment because there's a lot of truth to it-- recently I have seen memes and links to articles about women in the church being good enough. And there were other comments and such and then she had us read a quote by Elder Uchtdorf on how we are all different and that's good, that God didn't create us all the same, etc. and then she told a story about a guy who went around to schools teaching tolerance when she worked at a troubled teen school. The guy legally changed his name to the scary guy had tattoos all over his body and then showed the kids how nice he actually was and that we shouldn't judge. Then she went on on how we shouldn't judge others if they have a tattoo or whatever because God loves them just as much as he loves us. I thought it was interesting that she referred to tattooed people as them. Anyway, I didn't need any prompting to raise my hand this time. Because this whole concept of being one in the gospel and helping and loving each other in the church has been a huge let down for me. I've analyzed it a lot and I've worked through a lot of feelings and reset my expectations. It still makes me sad, but I am no longer devastated by it, I look at my experiences as learning and growth opportunities. I feel like I understand much better and I won't get stuck that way again. I am confidant. I have done my part to understand these bad behaviors and I can see that it's not my fault that I have been minimized and treated badly in 2 different wards by those who should have been my friends and brothers and sisters. So I made the point that sometimes it's easy to love those who are very different and have made obviously poor choices. It is a lot harder to love those who are very similar to us. I pointed out how in our ward we are all about the same and how it's really awful when we compete with each other instead of cooperate with each other and be happy for each other. Since we are so similar we have to find made up ways that we are better than someone else and then put those people down, And then I ended by saying how ridiculous and stupid it is that we do that. I am so tired of these made up competitions and games people play and how subtley rude they are to each other. Then there ends up being all these women who feel lonely and like they aren't good enough to be a president of any organization or to teach a lesson or do anything else. And the truth is any person in that room could have taught that lesson just fine. Any person in that room could be the Relief Society President or Young Women's President or Primary President. The leaders need to treat every person in that ward as an equal or greater peer to them. When the leaders use their calling for self aggrandizement everyone suffers including them. It seemed to me that when I was talking everyone liked my comment and agreed with me, because it's so clear and most the people in that room are not in charge of anything so they have had to learn to cope and find God on their own without any validation of a high church calling. I was especially glad that the stake RS Pres who is in our ward commented right after about how much harder it is to get along with people who are similar to you, so that made me happy and gave me some validation. So there you go.... Be nice to people, don't think that you are better than others because you or your husband have a high calling. Callings only mean something if you are humble and serve and do what God would have you do.