Choosing the Good Part - This is really good!

This is not my post but a post from a friends blog.
I found it totally inspiring and right on with my feelings.
This is used with permission from Robyn and you can find her original post HERE.

Like many of you, I am often overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt and frustration with the difference between how I would like to be and how I would like my life to be (perfect!) and how things really are. The apparent perfection I easily see in others too often leaves me feeling like an outsider in a world of perfect mothers, wives, housekeepers, cooks, crafters, scholars, and serving sisters.

It is so easy for me to let these feelings completely overtake me. It usually doesn't matter how much my angel husband tells me he loves me, that I am doing a good job, or that I am beautiful, I still question if I am actually good enough.

I feel safe sharing this because I know many of you feel the same way after reading many blog posts on this topic, and that is especially troubling to me because I know that it is an awful feeling. I also know that the adversary is very good at making us feel like we are less than we are.

A bit out of the visiting teaching message this month got me to thinking a lot about Mary and Martha. During one visit to the home of Mary and Martha, Mary sat at the feet of the Savior and listened as he taught, while Martha busied herself in the kitchen preparing a meal or doing some other tasks for the Savior. He spoke to her and said “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things.” The footnote here tells us that careful should be understood to mean "worried."

Jesus continued, “And Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.” I realize that I need to make sure I am choosing the "good part" that the Savior mentions (in Luke 10:42).

The story of Mary and Martha, observes Elder Dallin H. Oaks, “reminds every Martha, male and female, that we should not be so occupied with what is routine and temporal that we fail to cherish the opportunities that are unique and spiritual.” (Ensign, Nov. 1985, p. 61.)

The part that is most important to me here is when He says that it shall "not be taken away from her." I personally understand that to mean on a certain level that the things that truly matter, the gospel essential that bring us the most joy, are the things that will not be taken from us. The clothes we wear, the furniture we have, the crafts we made, how clean our house was, how perfect every dinner was, will not be ours to keep as we pass on to the next life. However worthy these things may be, if we are as Elder Oaks says "so occupied with what is routine and temporal" that we accidentally neglect what is more important, we will be like Martha and be cumbered and worried with many things, missing out on that "good part," of sitting, figuratively, at the Lord's feet trying our best to have faith and do the simple steps that bring us real happiness and joy.

I relate that to being so overwhelmed with some intensely high standard I have set for myself to reach that I forget to just do what is most important, and I know I definitely open myself up to those feelings of doubt and inadequacy. And once those feelings start, we can be completely carried away and forget that we are so very valuable, especially to the Lord.

I have so far to go before I master this simple concept, but I want to get there. Someday. I am a human and even worse I am a woman, so I know I will constantly need to revisit this idea and probably be forever after working on it, but I am trying.