Mother’s Day for me is a time of reflection. I think about my life as a mother and wonder if I’ve done enough and reflect on what I could have done better. One thing I would do different is to better teach the love of God. In the rush to teach my children all the things they needed to do and know to be good followers of Christ I should have allocated more spend time focusing on  the beauty of who He is and what it truly means that He is our Savior.

I was raised in a home where practice didn’t make perfect, perfect practice made perfect. This was well intended instruction but it often made me misunderstand the role of Jesus Christ the Savior and Redeemer of the world. As I have grown older, studied more, and become a parent myself I have found that my understanding and views of my Savior have changed. There are things that I am trying to teach my younger children; deeper understandings I have developed, that my older kids missed out on.

In the April 2025 general conference of the Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints there was a lovely talk given by Sister Tamara W. Runia that I really appreciated. She covered a topic I wish I would have taught better to my older kids, repentance. Sister Runia beautifully and succinctly taught how our worth to God is shown through his desire to have us repent and return to him, that our repentance is not a burden to Him or Christ but a joy. She reminded us that, “heaven isn’t for people who’ve been perfect; it’s for people who’ve been forgiven, who choose Christ again and again.”

The first thing I wish I knew to say was, the Savior isn’t waiting for you to become perfect so that you can come to Him. To use Sister Runia’s words, “I’ve learned that if you wait until you’re clean enough or perfect enough to go to the Savior, you’ve missed the whole point!” 

“I testify that while God cares about our mistakes, He cares more about what happens after we make a mistake. Are we going to turn to Him again and again? Are we going to stay in this covenant relationship?

“Maybe you hear the Lord’s words ‘If [you] love me, keep my commandments’ and feel deflated because you haven’t kept all the commandments. Let me remind you that it is also a commandment to repent! In fact, it might be the most repeated commandment in the scriptures.” 

-Tamara W. Runia

Like a baby learning to walk God knows we are going to fall. He isn’t standing there saying, “Well you fell down, loser. I’m done with you.” (My words, not hers.) Instead as Sister Runia points out, “the commandments are the path away from pain.”

So, when God tells us to repent He isn’t telling us we are awful and to go away. What He is saying is, “I love you. Please get up and try again. I want to be with you.” Jesus is standing there too, telling us that He loves us, that He understands, has paid the price and is willing to walk with us if we will just get up and try again.

God showed His love to us by giving us a Savior. Christ Showed His love to us by suffering and dying for our sins. We get to show our love to them by acting on their invitation to repent. To quote Sister Runia, “your repentance doesn’t burden Jesus Christ; it brightens His joy!”

Often I have heard doubt that God will really still love us when we keep making the same mistake over and over, but He does. He doesn’t care if you keep falling. He cares that you get back up again. It doesn’t matter to Him if you aren’t as perfect as the person next to you. He loves you because you are His. Sister Runia said it wonderfully this way, “He (God) delights to forgive us because to Him we are delightful.”

Why then is so hard to feel worthy of the love of God when we have done something wrong? It’s hard because of Satan who has made it his job to deceive and accuse mankind from the beginning. His weapon of choice in turning us from God at the very moment we need him most is shame. Sister Runia describes shame as, “a darkness so heavy it feels that if you took it out of your body, it would have an actual weight or heft to it.”

She goes on to say, “Shame doesn’t tell us we made a mistake; it tells us we are our mistakes….The adversary does everything in his power to keep the heaviness inside, telling us the cost is too high, that it will be easier if this stays in darkness, removing all hope.”

In this way Satan is not only deceiving us he is stealing one of the most precious gifts we have, hope. He tries to take away one of the brightest gifts of the atonement, the hope of a better day, the hope of understanding, the hope of love, the hope of forgiveness. We need to get Satan out of our heads and stop letting him steal our hope.

As Sister Runia said, “You are not the voice in your head or the mistakes you have made…Tell Satan, ‘Not today.’ Put him behind you.

“Feel that pull, the godly sorrow that turns you toward your Savior, and watch His grace enter into your life and the lives of those you love. I promise that the minute we bring a broken heart courageously toward Him, He is immediately there.”

This really hit me hard because as a mother I feel this. When my kids are suffering I want to be there to support them and nothing is harder than when they don’t want me there. When Sister Runia talked about how the Savior immediately comes when we turn towards him I felt that. I felt how real his desire is to be there for us and with us no matter what we may have done if we will just invite him in. 

As Sister Runia stated, “No one can sink lower than the light of Christ shines…He would never attack your worth.

She then goes on to say;

“Your worth isn’t tied to obedience. Your worth is constant; it never changes. It was given to you by God, and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do to change it. Obedience brings blessings; that is true. But worth isn’t one of them. Your worth is always ‘great in the sight of God,’ no matter where your decisions have taken you.”

Tamara W. Runia

I loved that! For so long I struggled with being perfect enough, let’s be honest I still do, but she is right. My worth in the sight of God is not tied to how perfect or imperfect I am. I have worth to Him because I am His child, and He loves me and finds value in me even when I can’t. Like Sister Runia I continue to try and stay in a covenant relationship with God in spite of my imperfections because He can see my heart. When everything goes so horribly wrong and I am failing to be enough in every aspect of life He gets me. He knows “how hard I am trying.”

Sister Runia puts it this way, “Coming unto Christ is saying, ‘Will you help me?’ with hope, a revealed assurance that His arms are extended to you always. I believe this fresh view of repentance means that even though we don’t have perfect obedience yet, we try affectionate obedience now, choosing to stay, again and again, because we love Him.”

She then goes on to explain that no longer wanting to sin is not the same thing as never sinning again. We are never going to be perfect. The important thing is that we have our “hearts turned and tuned to God while (we) struggle!”

That was some powerful validation that I needed. It’s ok to struggle in Christ. It’s ok for me to stumble as I try and follow Him. The important thing is that I’m following Him. He will come to me and aid me as it says in Malachi 4:2, “But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.”

In closing Sister Runia asked us to try an experiment. She wanted us to ask ourselves this question before we prayed, “What would my Savior say to the Father about me?”

She then asked us to listen quietly for the things He would say reminding us to, “listen for that voice that says good things about you.”

The Savior as our advocate to the Father would never say bad things about us. As sister Runia stated. “Remember, Their love and your worth are always great, no matter what!”

She ended with this powerful testimony,

“I stand here to witness that Jesus Christ gives light to those who sit in darkness. So, on those days when you feel that voice telling you to hide, that you should hide in a dark room all by yourself, I invite you to be brave and believe Christ! Walk over and turn on the Light—our Perfect Brightness of Hope.

“Bathed in His light, you’ll see people all around you who have felt alone too, but now, with the light on, you and they will wonder, ‘Why were we so afraid in the dark? And why did we stay there so long?’”

Tamara W. Runia

I also know this to be true. That God loved us so much He gave us Jesus. Our worth to Them and Their love for us is never-ending. I hope this knowledge carries you through on your tough days and helps you to see that repentance and forgiveness is truly a message from God saying He loves you and wants to be with you forever. Let us continue to choose Him every time we fall.