I found myself thinking this late one night recently.

I had an impossible amount of things on my to-do list, my kids were all displaying their frustrations in all sorts of fun ways, I felt misunderstood after a conversation with someone, and I forgot to turn on the crockpot for dinner.

Everything seemed to be going wrong.

In fact, I’ve noticed that when I’m focused on myself, I can pretty quickly convince my brain that I probably have it worse than anyone else right now.

But what happens when I broaden my perspective?

I suddenly remember that I love my family, weaknesses and all. We live in a home. We have food to eat. We are generally nice people.

But then I can broaden my perspective even more!

I reflect on where my life was a decade ago, five years ago, a year ago. Life keeps getting more complicated, but SO much better.⁣ I see my growth.

And then I broaden my perspective to the largest view I can go.

What a blessing it is that I am where I am and that I know what I know. Like, truly. I am so blessed.

One huge purpose of the Book of Mormon is that it:

“…puts forth the doctrines of the gospel, outlines the plan of salvation, and tells men what they must do to gain peace in this life and eternal salvation in the life to come.” (Introduction to the Book of Mormon)

When we broaden our perspective that wide, it is SO EASY for our problems, both trivial and serious, to melt away.⁣

We see the most important things more clearly in focus.⁣

In fact, our prophet recently counseled us:

“As you think celestial, you will view trials and opposition in a new light.” – President Nelson

Life has a lot of really difficult things to deal with.

But doing things like reading the Book of Mormon or worshiping in the temple can broaden our perspective to see things as they really are.

And that bigger perspective allows the Spirit to show us the truth:

That everything will be for our joy and our eternal progression.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post Broadening my perspective first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

And guess what?

That was all that she needed!

Her body only needed that milk, nothing more.

She had exactly what she needed for her healthy development. ⁣

But then she got a little older. ⁣

She needed to practice and learn how to deal with different textures and tastes. ⁣

Her body didn’t really need this other food, but she needed to prepare and practice for when that would be her only source of nutrition. ⁣

Sometimes she loved the new things she tried; other times, she would spit them back out. ⁣

Then she got even older, to the point that milk alone could no longer support her growing body.

She needed the nutrition from a variety of foods. ⁣

She needed to learn how to feed herself. ⁣

Do we see the parallels in our own gospel growth? ⁣

“I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.” (1 Corinthians 3:2)

It doesn’t really matter our age, or even if we were raised in the church. ⁣

We’ve gotta start with the basics. ⁣

Just go to church. Read your scriptures. Pray. Serve others when you can. ⁣

And that’s all that we need at first!

That’s what starts to mature us spiritually. ⁣

And then we start taking bites of the heartier meat of the gospel.

Truly studying the scriptures. Learning how to communicate better in prayer. Worshipping in the temple. Serving in a holier way. ⁣

Some of these new bites are hard to handle at first.

But the “milk” concepts are no longer quite cutting it on their own.

We recognize that we need something more in order to continue our spiritual growth. ⁣

The way I prayed when I was 8 years old looks very different than what “prayer” even means to me now.

But I needed that simple step of nice, easy instructions for prayer first.

We start with milk.

And then meat.

Sometimes we need to simplify and recenter ourselves with the basics.

And other times we know we are getting a little too comfortable, and feel a longing to deepen our relationship with Jesus Christ.

Which principle of the gospel are you ready to dive into more today?

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post Milk before meat  first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

I wanted to do it right the first time and get her trained as quickly as possible!

To my surprise, all of the latest research said to NOT do rewards or sticker charts because that gets the kids dependent on the outside rewards, instead of getting them intrinsically motivated to use the toilet.

It made sense though, and I moved forward with training my daughter without any immediate rewards or prizes, other than my verbal praise.

To be honest, she trained herself very quickly and caught on like a champ, although there were certainly plenty of accidents along the way.

But I was filled with such pride for her that I wanted to get her a new stuffed animal as a reward.

I remembered the warning about extrinsic motivation, but I also felt that I really wanted to give this to her.

I gave her a gift, she was super excited, and it didn’t affect her bathroom journey at all.

Now to make the weird comparison between potty training and our gospel progression.

I know that God doesn’t want us dependent on immediate blessings in order to have us keep His loving commandments.

He doesn’t want us reading our scriptures and then assuming everything will go perfectly that day, or saying a prayer asking for more patience and then immediately getting it.

He wants us to obey out of our love and devotion to Him, to be intrinsically motivated.

Job certainly learned this lesson.

But Job also learned another important lesson about the nature of God.

In Job 42:12, we read:

“So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning”.

God still wants to bless us because He loves us so much.

We don’t need to be motivated only by the blessings, hoping we’ll get another sticker on the eternal sticker chart.

But our loving Heavenly Father will always give us more than enough blessings to make up for anything we have lost, even if it means waiting until the next life.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post Blessings but not motivated by them first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.