Lately. I can't find the words I am looking for. I'm having a hard time putting infront of me what is on my brain. So let me make this short....
I've been in a little bit of a funk lately. (Awkward word. I think I just aged myself a little bit by using it too.)
I think it's quite possible that I am in first place for "Onriest Mom & Wife Ever". I'm hoping tomorrow does not make day three for mean mommy streak. I had a bad day yesterday and so I made goals for today. My day started out good but by the time Cade came home from work I felt out of fuel and I didn't feel like I had done much better than I did yesterday. I can try again tomorrow though. One of my favorite quotes that I really remember often sums up how I feel pretty well....."You haven’t lost at all, for winning is not more than this; to rise each time you fall." (Read "The Race" Here). I'm grateful for new days and fresh starts. I'm grateful for growth.
I saw this not long ago:
Love it. I hope that when I do become "Her" my lessons will be teachable. I will someday want my children to know that you don't become who Heavenly Father intends for you to be without a fight. We all have to go through our own trials, face our own challenges and fight against our own temptations. Being 'that person' comes with work. We aren't meant to just be who it's easiest to be. Goals have to be made. Lessons learned. Sacrifices felt. Life is not easy, but it's best that way.
While trying to get through day two of not so great day, I came by this talk. It's so good to be a Woman. It's so good to be a Mom. It's humbling to think about the influence I can have as a Woman and Mother. Feeling empowered and blessed tonight.
The Moral Force of Women
Your intuition is to do good and to be good, and as you follow the Holy Spirit, your moral authority and influence will grow.
From
age immemorial, societies have relied on the moral force of women.
While certainly not the only positive influence at work in society, the
moral foundation provided by women has proved uniquely beneficial to the
common good. Perhaps, because it is pervasive, this contribution of
women is often underappreciated. I wish to express
gratitude
for the influence of good women, identify some of the philosophies and
trends that threaten women’s strength and standing, and voice a plea to
women to cultivate the innate moral power within them.
Women
bring with them into the world a certain virtue, a divine gift that
makes them adept at instilling such qualities as faith, courage,
empathy, and refinement in relationships and in cultures. When praising
the “unfeigned faith” he found in Timothy, Paul noted that this faith
“dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice.”
1
Years
ago, while living in Mexico, I observed firsthand what Paul meant. I
recall a particular young mother, one of many among the women of the
Church in Mexico whose faith in God graces their lives so naturally that
they seem scarcely aware of it. This lovely woman radiated a moral
authority, born of goodness, that influenced all around her for good.
With her husband, she sacrificed a number of pleasures and possessions
for their higher priorities, seemingly without a second thought. Her
ability to perform feats of lifting, bending, and balancing with her
children was near superhuman. The demands on her were many and her tasks
often repetitive and mundane, yet underneath it all was a beautiful
serenity, a sense of being about God’s work. As with the Savior, she was
ennobled by blessing others through service and sacrifice. She was love
personified.
I
have been remarkably blessed by the moral influence of women, in
particular my mother and my wife. Among other women that I look to in
gratitude is Anna Daines. Anna and her husband, Henry, and their four
children were among the pioneers of the Church in New Jersey, in the
United States. Beginning in the 1930s, when Henry was a doctoral student
at Rutgers University, he and Anna worked tirelessly with school and
civic organizations in Metuchen, where they lived, to overcome deeply
rooted prejudice against Mormons and to make the community a better
place for all parents to raise their children.
Anna,
for example, volunteered at the Metuchen YMCA and made herself
indispensable. Within a year she was appointed president of the Mothers’
Auxiliary and then “was asked to run for one of the three women’s
positions on the YMCA board of directors. She won without opposition,
and so joined the very council that only a few years before had refused
to let the Saints meet in their building!”2
My
family
moved into the New Brunswick Ward when I was a teenager. Sister Daines
took notice of me and often expressed her confidence in my abilities and
potential, which inspired me to reach high—higher than I would have
without her encouragement. Once, because of a thoughtful and timely
warning from her, I avoided a situation that would surely have led to
regret. Although she is no longer here, Anna Daines’s influence
continues to be felt and reflected in the lives of her descendants and
countless others, myself included.
My
grandmother Adena Warnick Swenson taught me to be conscientious in
priesthood service. She encouraged me to memorize the sacramental
blessings on the bread and water, explaining that in this way I could
express them with greater understanding and feeling. Observing how she
sustained my grandfather, a stake patriarch, engendered in me a
reverence for sacred things. Grandma Swenson never learned how to drive a
car, but she knew how to help boys become priesthood men.
A
woman’s moral influence is nowhere more powerfully felt or more
beneficially employed than in the home. There is no better setting for
rearing the rising generation than the traditional family, where a
father and a mother work in harmony to provide for, teach, and nurture
their children. Where this ideal does not exist, people strive to
duplicate its benefits as best they can in their particular
circumstances.
In
all events, a mother can exert an influence unequaled by any other
person in any other relationship. By the power of her example and
teaching, her sons learn to respect womanhood and to incorporate
discipline and high moral standards in their own lives. Her daughters
learn to cultivate their own virtue and to stand up for what is right,
again and again, however unpopular. A mother’s love and high
expectations lead her children to act responsibly without excuses, to be
serious about education and personal development, and to make ongoing
contributions to the well-being of all around them. Elder Neal A.
Maxwell once asked: “When the real history of mankind is fully
disclosed, will it feature the echoes of gunfire or the shaping sound of
lullabies? The great armistices made by military men or the peacemaking
of women in homes and in neighborhoods? Will what happened in cradles
and kitchens prove to be more controlling than what happened in
congresses?”
3
Most sacred is a woman’s role in the creation of life. We know that our physical bodies have a divine origin
4
and that we must experience both a physical birth and a spiritual
rebirth to reach the highest realms in God’s celestial kingdom.
5 Thus, women play an integral part (sometimes at the risk of their own lives) in God’s work and glory “to bring to pass the
immortality and eternal life of man.”
6
As grandmothers, mothers, and role models, women have been the
guardians of the wellspring of life, teaching each generation the
importance of sexual purity—of chastity before marriage and fidelity
within marriage. In this way, they have been a civilizing influence in
society; they have brought out the best in men; they have perpetuated
wholesome environments in which to raise secure and healthy children.
Sisters,
I don’t want to overpraise you as we sometimes do in Mother’s Day talks
that make you cringe. You don’t have to be perfect;
7
I don’t claim that you are (with one possible exception who is sitting
nearby at the moment). What I mean to say is that whether you are single
or married, whether you have borne children or not, whether you are
old, young, or in between, your moral authority is vital, and perhaps we
have begun to take it and you for granted. Certainly there are trends
and forces at work that would weaken and even eliminate your influence,
to the great detriment of individuals, families, and society at large.
Let me mention three as a caution and a warning.
A
pernicious philosophy that undermines women’s moral influence is the
devaluation of marriage and of motherhood and homemaking as a career.
Some view homemaking with outright contempt, arguing it demeans women
and that the relentless demands of raising children are a form of
exploitation.
8
They ridicule what they call “the mommy track” as a career. This is not
fair or right. We do not diminish the value of what women or men
achieve in any worthy endeavor or career—we all benefit from those
achievements—but we still recognize there is not a higher good than
motherhood and fatherhood in marriage. There is no superior career, and
no amount of money, authority, or public acclaim can exceed the ultimate
rewards of family. Whatever else a woman may accomplish, her moral
influence is no more optimally employed than here.
Attitudes toward human sexuality threaten the moral authority of women on several fronts.
Abortion
for personal or social convenience strikes at the heart of a woman’s
most sacred powers and destroys her moral authority. The same is true of
sexual immorality and of revealing dress that not only debases women
but reinforces the lie that a woman’s sexuality is what defines her
worth.
There
has long been a cultural double standard that expected women to be
sexually circumspect while excusing male immorality. The unfairness of
such a double standard is obvious, and it has been justifiably
criticized and rejected. In that rejection, one would have hoped that
men would rise to the higher, single standard, but just the opposite has
occurred—women and girls are now encouraged to be as promiscuous as the
double standard expected men to be. Where once women’s higher standards
demanded commitment and responsibility from men, we now have sexual
relations without conscience, fatherless families, and growing poverty.
Equal-opportunity promiscuity simply robs women of their moral influence
and degrades all of society.
9 In this hollow bargain, it is men who are “liberated” and women and children who suffer most.
A
third area of concern comes from those who, in the name of equality,
want to erase all differences between the masculine and the feminine.
Often this takes the form of pushing women to adopt more masculine
traits—be more aggressive, tough, and confrontational. It is now common
in movies and video games to see women in terribly violent roles,
leaving dead bodies and mayhem in their wake. It is soul-numbing to see
men in such roles and certainly no less so when women are the ones
perpetrating and suffering the violence.
Former
Young Women general president Margaret D. Nadauld taught: “The world
has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are
enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are
enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough
women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough
greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more
virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity.”
10
In blurring feminine and masculine differences, we lose the distinct,
complementary gifts of women and men that together produce a greater
whole.
My
plea to women and girls today is to protect and cultivate the moral
force that is within you. Preserve that innate virtue and the unique
gifts you bring with you into the world. Your intuition is to do good
and to be good, and as you follow the Holy Spirit, your moral authority
and influence will grow. To the young women I say, don’t lose that moral
force even before you have it in full measure. Take particular care
that your language is clean, not coarse; that your dress reflects
modesty, not vanity; and that your conduct manifests purity, not
promiscuity. You cannot lift others to virtue on the one hand if you are
entertaining vice on the other.
Sisters,
of all your associations, it is your relationship with God, your
Heavenly Father, who is the source of your moral power, that you must
always put first in your life. Remember that Jesus’s power came through
His single-minded devotion to the will of the Father. He never varied
from that which pleased His Father.
11 Strive to be that kind of disciple of the Father and the Son, and your influence will never fade.
And
do not be afraid to apply that influence without fear or apology. “Be
ready always to give an answer to every [man, woman, and child] that
asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.”
12 “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.”
13 “Bring up your children in light and truth.”
14 “Teach [them] to pray, and to walk uprightly before the Lord.”
15
In
these exhortations to women, let no one willfully misunderstand. By
praising and encouraging the moral force in women, I am not saying that
men and boys are somehow excused from their own duty to stand for truth
and righteousness, that their responsibility to serve, sacrifice, and
minister is somehow less than that of women or can be left to women.
Brethren, let us stand with women, share their burdens, and cultivate
our own companion moral authority.
Dear
sisters, we rely on the moral force you bring to the world, to
marriage, to family, to the Church. We rely on blessings you bring down
from heaven by your prayers and faith. We pray for your security,
welfare, and happiness and for your influence to be sustained. In the
name of
Jesus Christ, amen.
