"Search diligently, pray always, and be believing."
Sometimes that's the hardest part.
Parents don't believe in themselves,
but they don't have to.
They can believe that if they tap
into the power of Jesus Christ and His gracious Atonement,
that He will help them, that He'll help them understand
their children better.
He'll help lead them to the light.
And as they move toward the light,
they will share that with their children in love and hope.
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We have varying degrees of our ability
and our developmental maturity in terms
of handling temptation, handling things that come our way.
But all of us are more likely to struggle when we're tired,
when we are upset, when we are overstressed,
when we're hungry or thirsty, just in general.
I see from a very early age my little grandchildren, when
they get really tired, things that they could manage
very successfully when they're not tired become a huge deal
that they have a complete breakdown over when they're
exhausted.
And sometimes we're trying to deal with the behavior
when what we need to be dealing with is,
this kid's tired and needs to go to bed.
We need that information in our own heads as well.
When I'm struggling, is it because I'm lonely?
Is it because I'm tired?
Is it because I'm stressed about something?
Is it because something else happened
that's making me not feel very good about myself?
Did somebody say something that hurt my feelings
or rejected me?
If I can stop and have those conversations in my head
as a young person, I can begin to make better choices
than just going to the internet and looking up something
I shouldn't be looking at.
So when working with adolescents,
the most important thing that you can do
is get the parents involved.
I'll teach parents to help children
identify their emotions, name the emotion,
and then share the emotion with someone else,
particularly if it's a difficult emotion that they
don't know what to do with.
And the child would go, "Yeah, I think I feel sad."
And then you say to the child, "Thank you for sharing that.
That's important.
That's a big deal that you're opening up."
And as parents then, we don't want to distract them
from their feelings.
We want to say, "OK, well, just let yourself
feel that for a minute."
And the parent can say, "Well, give me a hug--that's the first
thing we're going to do--and let's talk about it.
And if you can't figure it out right now,
let's keep talking until you understand it."
We can do the same thing with sexual feelings.
We can say, "Do you feel how powerful that is?
Isn't that amazing that that can take over your body
and you can't think of almost anything else?
It feels like you're going to explode.
That is a gift from God--that feeling,
that desire to connect and bond with another human being,
with somebody that you deeply love and you've made
a commitment to, and you have decided,
'This is the person that I'm going to spend the rest
of eternity with.'
That helps us stay bonded and connected
even when times get tough.
Now, right now, there's nothing you're
going to do about that feeling.
You're not married.
You're not going to engage with that feeling.
But instead of trying to suppress it and stuff it
and ignore it--because it's going to just keep coming
back--you need to say, 'Hey, there's the feeling again.
I don't know what to do with it.'
And let's just sit with it for a minute.
Because as human beings, we know that all feelings
are temporary.
Every emotion, every experience passes and makes
room for something else.
And even though you might feel like you're going to die,
eventually that feeling will pass and you can move on.
And instead of shoving it down, you can just embrace it.
'It's part of who I am as a person.'"
I think it would be very self-defeating
for anyone--young or old, in any circumstance--to somehow think,
"Because I'm not perfect, then I'm obviously then just
a failure.
There's no purpose in even pursuing that."
That would just be the adversary's,
I think, principal way to attack conviction
and to attack the idea of progress.
So let's not talk about perfection here,
and applaud the fact that he says he
repents, that he tries again.
I spoke in general conference not long ago about the fact
that God rewards trying.
He said He's given the blessings from heaven and the gifts that
come from heaven to those who keep His commandments
and those who seek so to do.
And not everybody keeps all the commandments,
but we can all seek so to do, and we can keep trying
and keep repenting.
And that's what life is.
I don't think that it's meant to be a way out or an easy way
to get off the hook about keeping the commandments
or our moral obligations.
But it is an honest acknowledgment about mortality
and about human frailty that we are going to need
to repent--and thank heavens we can--and we can't ever
trivialize that principle.
We can't ever take it for granted.
We can't ever abuse it.
Repentance is a sacred principle,
but it's always extended to us.
And we can always keep trying, and we can always
do a little better.
If we're moving and trying and praying and weeping,
that's what God applauds, and that's what He'll help.
That help's always going to be available to us.
He's going to--our Father in Heaven is going to respond
to that kind of effort and help.
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