Striving for Progress

As I listened to Persident Joy D. Jones' Saturday Morning General Conference talk, one sentence of her talk stood out to me more than any other: "We are always progressing as long as we are striving to follow the Lord."

I strive to follow the Lord, and I sometimes get tired and frustrated with all the striving I have to do, mostly because it often doesn't feel like I'm making any spiritual progress. Yet, partly because of Eternal Progression and partly because of this quote, I know that I am making progress toward my ultimate goal, even if that progress is too slow for my mortal mind to detect.

I sometimes think that we're on a treadmill, like if we're not progressing fast enough, we're actually regressing, and now I think that that's only partly true. It's true that, if we're not moving forward, we are actually regressing, but now I think that almost any amount of forward movement is enough to overcome the regression of the treadmill. We need to be progressing "fast enough" in that we need to be progressing at all. And according to President Jones, all we need to do to make progress is to strive for it. I can, at the very least, do that.

I'm grateful to hear that making spiritual progress isn't as hard as I sometimes make it out to be. Don't get me wrong, life is hard, but it's not as hard as I sometimes think it is. We don't need to be perfect to be successful. We just need to try and to keep trying for as long as we can and to dust ourselves off and try again as often as we need to. If we keep trying long enough, eventually, we will succeed.  It's comforting to know that, in order to make spiritual progress, all we have to do is strive for it.