The live Sister-to-Sister event, broadcast from the Marriott Center as part of the 2019 BYU Women’s Conference, began with “a big question” submitted by a woman in the Church who described herself as “tired.”
The pregnant mother of three little boys — ages 5, 3 and 1 — who also serves as her ward’s Young Women secretary, wrote, “I could happily sleep for 4 years yet I feel pressure to be a contributing professional who makes the world a better place and a nurturing home sanctuary-making mother with a perfectly clean, but appropriately stimulating, home full of healthy, nontoxic yet delicious meals and pleasant decor, where the gospel is lived and taught always.”
The woman shared that she tries to make time for the scriptures and prayer, stay awake during her temple attendance and appropriately nurture her little ones. And yet, “everywhere I look, there are voices telling me to do more, be more, fit more in, spend more, more, more.” Invitations to be better often make her feel more resentful than encouraged, which led her to ask: “How do we balance rest and saying ‘no’ with the high commission given us as covenant-keeping, relief-providing sisters in the kingdom of God?”