One concern I’ve heard from many people at church is:
No one likes feeling like a project.
We all want to matter to other people in real ways.
Which makes fake friendships or very obviously being a “project” especially harmful.
Maybe your mind is starting to feel frustration or resentment for moments when you’ve lacked authentic connection and friendship.
But let’s look forward with a “Lord, is it I?” mindset.
Do we sometimes treat others just like an assignment?
Do we forget that each person we interact with is an extremely valuable Child of God that He loves more than we can comprehend?
Do we avoid the vulnerability of “real” for the comfort of “safe”?
Jesus Christ, of course, taught the perfect example of this.
First, he instructed the Nephites that if someone isn’t worthy, they should not be partaking of the sacrament anymore.
(A command that always seemed harsh to me until I realized that “being damned” is less about a curse from an ruthless God and instead a natural consequence of stopping our own progression.)
But then, Jesus tells His disciples to never cast out those who have become unworthy.
Instead?
“Ye shall minister unto him and shall pray for him”. (3 Nephi 18:30)
We always minister and pray and love.
So how do we accomplish this without making someone feel like a project?
This is something I’ve been working on for a while – developing and showing true, authentic love.
And something that I’ve only been able to do by seeing beautiful examples from other women that I look up to.
What have they taught me?
Listen much more than we talk.
Most people just want someone to connect with.
And connection comes through conversation and shared experiences.
And when I listen to a sister who has lived a very different path than I have, and I listen and pray and listen some more…
I am filled with the true love of God towards them.
Some people aren’t ready to open up and talk yet, which means finding small ways to show them I care and remember them.
But at the end of the day, we all crave true connection.
So I challenge you to reflect today:
How can I become more authentic in my relationships with others?
How can I show love, no matter what others choose to do?
How I continue to minister and pray in precisely the way my Savior would to each of His children?
Happy Studying!
-Cali Black
4 Responses
Ministering, or visit teaching as it used to be known as, is the reason I’m back at church. My kids are eternally sealed to hood, worthy spouses, and after 33 years, my husband finally joined us, & we were eternally sealed.
Then we moved to a whole new state where one of my ‘ministering’ sisters told me, in front of the whole ward as we had a 5th Sun confab on ministering, that she has her friends & doesn’t need anymore!
After that, during Covid, about 100 people moved into our ward. No lie!
I don’t know what this ‘sister’ did with those people. I didn’t pay attention.
I can’t tell you how hurt I was over this action.
I’ve always felt like visit teaching/ministering was in the Lord’s hands, esp after having been an RS pres. He knows who we need in our lives, esp if we wouldn’t normally cross paths with someone. I’ve always looked at vt/ministering as an opportunity to make a new friend, not an assignment, but where our venn diagrams of life intersect.
My testimony is in Jesus, which is why/how after such hateful treatment (& ‘welcome’ to this ward), I’m still active & didn’t leave.
Sorry for the book response. Ministering is just a very tender subject to me.
I am so sorry you had that experience, but I am proud of you for continuing to show up, knowing that’s what our Savior would do. <3
Cali. Your insights are invaluable. I can hear your smiling voice whenever I read the post. Thank you so much for your work. This one or two pages has to take many many hours each week. Your oil is definitely lighting our lamps.
I recently heard a story I feel should be shared about what it means to feel like a project. That label has always left me feeling sad but not for the reason you might think. See, I was a definitely a project at one point in my young life. I am forever grateful the individuals who accepted “the path of their duty” and regarded me with enough respect to show up and complete . . . said project. I am here in my kitchen with a full heart and full conversion because they followed through with an assignment. I get it. “Project” is shorthand for something we would otherwise [usually] not do. But I feel like it kind of lets us off the hook too easily. In other words, if someone gives us an assignment we brush it off like it would be more offensive to do the action than to push it away. Somehow that has more integrity? I don’t think so. Enough about me. Here is a wonderful story from one of my favorite podcasts “My Unsung Hero” produced by Shankar Vedantam. I think you will love her example. I hope this reframes what it means to have someone organize around another; in other words–make them a project : 0 Have a beautiful day!
from Molly Baker. In March of 2018, Molly lost her husband Marlin in a skiing accident. In the first few weeks after his death, her community provided a lot of support. But after a while, the cards and meals started to slow down.
Molly Baker: People have, you know, families come into town and families left. People have to get back to their jobs. People have to get back to their normal life. And so things kind of drop off. I had a dear friend of mine, Carla Vale, who came up with this idea that maybe she could set up a calendar of sorts that would assign people a particular day. And what that looked like for them was that on that day, they would reach out to me in some tangible way, maybe via text, maybe a phone call, maybe a card. They would drop off a card. Maybe they would drop some chocolates or something off of my door. It didn’t have to be anything big. And then also for me, I could look at the calendar. I was given the names. And so I could look at the calendar and be like, oh, it’s the sixth today and so and so is assigned. And I could reach out to them as well if I needed some emotional support or just needed something like maybe I needed them to run an errand for me or, you know, if that was possible. So it worked both ways. A lot of people are really, really uncomfortable around grief and loss. And so what they do is instead of doing something, they just do nothing and they don’t say anything. And that’s the worst. I mean, I remember going to the grocery store and I would see someone in the distance that they would know me and they would literally turn around and walk the other direction because they were so uncomfortable. They were so uncomfortable with my loss that they didn’t know what to say to me. So that’s why it was nice to have that calendar set up so that that was tangible, like, oh, you could send a text, you could do this, you could do that. Some ideas of tangible ways was very helpful. I love that Carla did this, and it was a way that she was able to use her unique gifts to help other people love on me. And I will always be grateful, forever grateful for that year in my life.
Shankar Vedantam: Molly Baker lives in Sammamish, Washington.
I love that story. Thanks for sharing!