I often am very selfish. I want things to be my way, I want to keep control. I find that in many things, I prefer to do it alone because I have total creative control over the outcome (the hall closet is organized in the ‘correct’ way because I did it, the bed looks right because I made it, and on and on…) I tend to understand the world around me filtered strongly through my own pre-conceived notions of how the world works.

I’m afraid this notion cripples me in many ways. I suffer because I tend to give in to the notion that I must, I simply must, be responsible for my own everything – my own laundry piles, my own kitchen organization, my own parental style, my own salvation. This is dangerous and plainly impossible.

On a snowy Sunday some weeks ago, I sat in Relief Society, crumbling under the tower of expectations I had built on top of myself. I sat in the back, staring blankly at the chalkboard wondering how I could possibly take on anything else in my life. My need to have everything ‘just so’ was entwining itself around my calendar and choking my time and energy to a critical point. The Relief Society President was talking about sisters that needed meals, bread-making classes that needed attendees, missionaries that needed to eat. She passed around all these ‘clipboards of guilt’, where I could stare for a moment at a need I wasn’t sure I could meet, wonder if the people next to me would notice if I didn’t sign up, then buckle under the self-made pressure and sign every one of them.

I honestly want to be helpful. I know the missionaries are hungry. I want to help out the sisters in my ward. I really want to make bread that doesn’t taste like red-clay bricks. But I signed those clipboards because I couldn’t let myself not sign them. Good women help each other, Christ-like people serve those around them. I want to be a ‘go-to’ person, reliable and helpful and smiling and kind. I just might break apart, but isn’t that just my own problem? Doesn’t it just mean I’m not strong enough?

In the carefully constructed and structured life I’m living, I starting to realize that I’m missing something that doesn’t get talked about enough. I spend my time trying to sacrifice my way to salvation. I spend my time trying to do everything on my own, with my own ideas, my own plans, my own recipes, my own sweat and tears, and my own strength. I’m missing something fundamental, and it’s threatening my very salvation.

I’m missing grace.

When the Savior suffered in Gethsemane, I wonder where I was. Was I aware? Did I know my part in His pain? Did I know of all the prideful arrogance in me that would cause me to think I could save myself? Did I know how truly selfish I would be by now allowing the Savior’s gift to penetrate me? Did I watch Him suffer and understand how I added to it?

I have long suffered from the drive to perfection. I now must consciously choose to let the Savior in, and letting Him in requires me to let go. Letting go of the need to be in charge, letting go of my need for control, letting go of the attempt to save myself.

If I cannot let go, I cannot let the Savior in. I must say it again and again and again.

It is that critical. I simply must get it right.

Have you let the grace of God into your life? How has it helped you to let go? How can we strive to do our best while still acknowledging that it will never be enough? That we will always need the Lord’s grace?