This is particularly true of parenthood, as you said. It is a terrifying prospect, to have so much influence on another person’s life. I only pray I don’t mess up too badly.

Kevin: I side with Ray; it seems your son has a keen insight into the human condition.

smb/Researcher: thanks for pointing out the application to parenting; I’m not one yet and hadn’t considering the awesome unpredictability of that particular calling!

Latter-day Guy: your quotation reminds me of a poorly done crown that turned into a root canal–talk about wailing and gnashing of teeth!

Ronan: maybe in absolute terms, but you have to view these things in context–compared to Elder X I was practically a saint and in contrast to Elder Y devoted to the White Handbook.

Molly: it sounds like your nurse reversed the third error by taking a long-term view when really only the immediate interests mattered. Thanks too for the reference; I will look it up.

Nora: I was truly surprised how difficult it was to organize rides. To be fair, many in the ward do not need a car in Vienna given its excellent public transportation network and most that do have kids filling the available seats, but that episode was a lesson in “just because it seems like it ought to be simple doesn’t mean it is.”

Gary: “It is easy to be right. It is much more difficult to be effective.” Amen. And as Kevin noted above, the more annoying our efforts the louder the accolades.

California Condor: “I think that being set apart as a full-time missionary is in a way a license to be reckless.” Maybe someday Ronan will tell his story of being a bold missionary. I know I haven’t been able to muster a repeat performance since coming home.

Susan M: Hopefully he would be charitable enough to let you flee : )

Mark IV: I can always appreciate a good Shrek reference. Also, your point about expecation management is a good one and you are right that the error wasn’t in taking some kind of action, but in assuming the plan would be sufficient to solve the problem.

Dave: that is as good advice as I’ve heard.

I was involved in a Stake Leadership Training Meeting this evening, and I felt compelled to remind those who were in the AP Leadership group that “raising the bar” for the youth, their leaders and the parents does NOT mean establishing the bar at the same height for all YM. Rather, imho, it should mean helping each individual YM jump a little higher than he was able to jump previously.

If the bar is set at 7′6″ for everyone, there will be much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth - and failure; if it is set at 3′0″ for everyone, there will be much boredom and daydreaming and drifting away. The key is to know each YM well enough to raise that YM’s bar just high enough so that clearing it is possible but requires increased effort and growth and strength.

I think that is applicable to this post.

frankly this post reminds me of what I find so terrifying about parenthood. there’s nothing i’d rather do right than raise my kids and nothing i think as unpredictable as parenting. Thank God for God on this one, I think.

“What do people mean when they say ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good?’ Have they never … been to a dentist?”

Like many things, I think, the rightness of acts of service sometimes may become clear only in the rear-view mirror.

My main thought relates to the first “lack of knowledge” - simply that we often believe we know what is best for others without bothering to get to know them intimately and ask them what they want for themselves. I have seen that *way* too much in my administrative meetings over the years. If we stopped making this assumption and simply asked others for their input, most of these problems would disappear, imo - sometimes because the “solutions” will be manifest, but other times because we will realize that they weren’t really problems in the first place.

Other than that, great post. Many of my attempts to do good have resulted in failure, one spectacularly so. An old cliche will do: more speed, less haste.

YES! I think of the nurse a friend fired last week because, as he and everyone else knew he would die within days, she would not give him all the ice cream he wanted. It was not “Healthy.”

Long ago I decided duty was not to be my guiding principle in the Church. It is a dangerous conclusion, but not as dangerous as doing everything asked of one. Which reminds me of a wonderful story on point in the last Dialogue, “Entertaining Angels Unaware,” by Laura McCune Poplin, V 42, #1 (Spring 2008), PP 91-112.