Doing what we can and not feeling guilty : The parable of the widow's mite

Dear readers,

I apologize for the long hiatus. I keep writing blog posts and they don’t feel quite right so I shelve them for later and later never seems to happen.

I’m currently on a fantastic road trip to see family. This last weekend we were visiting family in Arizona, and Amy and I had a ton of fun. Sadly, vacation from everything else in life doesn’t mean I get a vacation from gender dysphoria.

I was sitting in Sacrament meeting on Sunday and suddenly the dysphoria was overwhelming. My tie felt like a hundred pounds sitting around my neck. The walls felt like they were closing in. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and the hole in my heart felt like it was three feet wide. The anxiety was completely overwhelming. It was all I could do to sit there on the pew and just try and breathe. I just sat there thinking “It’s going to be ok, just breathe, it’s going to be ok, just breathe…” over and over again until the panic started to subside.

In my ward, after sacrament meeting I go to primary, which is a huge blessing. Normally any anxiety I’ve felt earlier can recede a little and I get to be with the kids. I get to skip Priesthood, which is always super hard for me. But here, visiting family in Arizona, I went to Sunday School and then Priesthood. After the anxiety attack I’d had in Sacrament meeting I’ll admit I totally checked out of Sunday School and Priesthood. I barely paid any attention to anything that was going on. Afterwards, I felt incredibly guilty for checking out. I literally got nothing out of church that Sunday.

As I was pondering about this guilt later, the parable of the widow’s mite came to my mind.

Luke 21:1-4 (NKJV):

And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, ² and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites. ³ So He said, “Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all; ⁴ for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God,^[a] but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had.”

I imagine that the poor widow didn’t necessarily feel proud of her offering, in fact she probably wished that she could give more. She saw all those rich individuals around her donating more money than she would ever have in her life. This didn’t stop her from making her meager offering, but I imagine that even the widow felt a little guilt over how little she could give.

How often in life do we feel guilt after literally putting everything we have into our offering for the Lord?

I went to church, I did my very best, and I’ll be honest it was excruciatingly hard just to be there. I just wanted to go home and curl up in a ball. Why did I feel guilty for trying as much as I could? Through my guilt I was denying the atonement of my Savior. He knew that I had made the best offering that I could that Sunday. As I pondered this thought, I could imagine my Savior saying “I accept your offering.”

I think this parable really helps put things in perspective. How often do those of us who are struggling see someone who has been given more make an offering of time, effort, or money to the Lord and feel guilty for the little that we can give? How often, do we look at others and judge their meager offerings thinking that surely they could do more?

Maybe the best offering that someone can make is merely being in Church that Sunday. Maybe the best offering they can make is attending just one of the three hours of meetings. Maybe the best offering that can be made is staying home and reading the scriptures. The Lord accepts their offering, no matter how small the offering, and only the Lord knows how great their offering truly was.

Through the grace of God all of our offerings are accepted. None of us ever consecrate enough to the Lord that we can return to him without our Savior. Here is my plea--that we can all stop feeling guilty when we don’t feel like we made a sufficient offering to the Lord. Let’s just give what we can, and let the atonement make it enough.

I know this is certainly something that I need to work on.