by Annette Lyon
As Latter-day Saints, we have quite a “to do” list. Raise your hand if you fulfill every bit of the following with exactness: Attend all church meetings every week. Pray daily—not just alone but with a spouse and with family. Multiple times daily. Have daily scripture study alone, with spouse, and family. Fast monthly. Do Visiting or Home Teaching. Have a year’s supply of food. (Don’t
forget the garden and then canning the harvest—oh, and grinding our own wheat and making homemade bread.) Obey the Word of Wisdom (which includes getting enough sleep and exercise). Pay tithing and other offerings. Hold weekly Family Home Evenings. And don’t forget Family History work and attending the temple.

Anyone raising their hand? Bet not. If you’re human, there’s a chance that this list (which isn’t close to comprehensive) can be discouraging at best.

The reality is that none of us is perfect. We slip and we fall short regularly. For the most part, we dust ourselves off and keep trying. If you’re like me, inevitably, there are times you wonder, “why?” Do these things we do every single day really make that big of a difference? Do they really matter? When gathering the kids together for scripture study feels like a prelude to World War III, I wonder if I’m scarring them for life more than doing anything to aid their eternal welfare.

When those doubts creep, we need to buckle down harder and return to basics
with even more force. It’s important to remember that even with every item on our “Latter-day Saint To-Do List” certain items will take priority over others—today, helping a sister whom you Visit Teach might trump going to the temple. It might not matter if you canned as many quarts of peaches this year as the year before, especially if those extra bottles were left off the list so you could devote more time to something else on the list.

What matters is that you’re adding oil to your lamp, drop by drop, and doing so consistently.

The kids might not get something out of last night’s scripture study when they spent most of the time fighting over who got to sit on which couch cushion (“She’s touching me!”), but the fact that you’ve created a regular pattern of study and are following through with it means something. It means that your children see what you value. It means that even if they’re pulling each other’s hair out, they might also have an ear open to what’s being read. It means that someday, they’ll look back and remember the time spent around the scriptures. What they recall could be specific verses or discussions, but more than likely, the memories will be other things: the day they learned—and gained a testimony of—a gospel principle. They’ll seek after the peaceful impressions they first had at their mother’s knee, that whispered impression of the truthfulness of the gospel. They’ll know they are loved and valued.

We have so many things we’re supposed to do. I doubt I’m the only person who’s wished I could justify skipping church every so often or forgetting about Family Home Evening for a few months. Eliminating those things would simplify my life, wouldn’t it?

But then I look behind me and see the path my family has taken, step by tiny (small and simple) step, and how far we’ve come. I see how those little things impact the spirit and tone of our home and how they help my children find answers to their problems. I see what kinds of perils still wait on the path before them and know they’ll need the extra protection and aid these small and simple things can provide.

And then I realize that the way back to our Father isn’t about the big, showy things we as mortals might think make the biggest difference. Instead, like water in the river that oh-so-slowly shapes and polishes the rough edges of a rock, so do the small and simple behaviors we do in our private lives shape and polish our hearts.

Slowly—so slowly that at times we might not see any progress, even if we’re getting further all the time. Granted, paying tithing and fasting once a month aren’t spectacular events. Praying with the kids—while trying to keep them from poking each other’s eyes out—isn’t something you’ll ever be lauded for.

And yet….

We keep doing them, because, as small and simple as they are, when they are put together over a lifetime of days, of weeks, of years, those tiny steps, taken one at a time, and often in frustration, truly produce “that which is great.”