Sister Beck says, "it is clear that the purposes of Relief Society are to increase faith and personal righteousness, strengthen families and homes, and seek out and help those in need. Faith, family, and relief these three simple words have come to express the vision of prophets for sisters in the Church."
Elder Boyd K. Packer said, "it is as obligatory upon a woman to draw into her life the virtues that are fostered by the Relief Society as it is an obligation for the men to build into their lives the patterns of character fostered by the priesthood."
The vision of Relief Society is Faith, Family, and Relief. No wonder I have never felt these feelings of inequality. I feel comfortably rooted in my part of my family tree. This is the work my mother did, my grandmother, and her mother before her. I am one link in a chain of a legacy of Women raising families unto God. I too will encourage my children to honor the sanctity of womanhood and respect women as the mothers and future mothers of this world and the next. Being a mother is not a little thing. We create the visions of the world in the minds of our children. If our children grow up believing that the world is cruel and unkind it is most likely because of how we raised them. Likewise if they grow up believing that this world is kind and honest and giving it will also be because us. It is those attitudes towards the world that set up a person to either see the way the world will help them to meet their potential or see how the world is hateful and will beat them down every time they try to get up. For me raising a child who sees the good in the world is the only option.
David O. McKay shared this idea by saying, "Motherhood is the greatest potential influence either for good or ill in human life. The mother's image is the first that stamps itself on the unwritten page of the young child's mind. It is her caress that first awakens a sense of security, her kiss, the realization of affection; her sympathy and tenderness, the first assurance that there is love in the world."
"As mothers, we have more influence among the children in our own homes than we can have among anyone else." -Rachel Keppner (Blogger)
Susan W. Tanner said it well when she said, "Homemaking skills are becoming a lost art. I worry about this. When we lose the homemakers in a society, we create an emotional homelessness much like street homelessness, with similar problems of despair, drugs, immorality, and lack of self-worth. In a publication called The Family of America, Bryce Christensen writes that the number of homeless people on the street 'does not begin to reveal the scope of homelessness in America. For since when did the word home signify merely physical shelter, or homelessness merely the lack of such shelter?...Home [signifies] not only shelter, but also emotional commitment, security, and belonging. Home has connoted not just a necessary roof and warm radiator, but a place sanctified by the abiding ties of wedlock, parenthood, and family obligation; a place demanding sacrifice and devotion, but promising loving care and warm acceptance."
"Said Thomas Wolfe: 'There is no spectacle on earth more appealing that that of a beautiful women in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves.' Or, to which I might add, cuddling a baby, or leading a child in prayer, or counseling a strong young son or daughter, or comforting a tired companion." -Gordon B. Hinkley
No one anywhere needs us more than our children and husbands do! -Rachel Keppner
Elder James E Faust reminded women, "Do not be deceived in your quest to find happiness and an identity of your own. Entreating voices may tell you that what you have seen your mothers and grandmothers do is old-fashioned, unchallenging, boring, and drudgery. It may have been old-fashioned and perhaps routine; at times it was drudgery. But your mothers and grandmothers have sung a song that expressed the highest love and the noblest of womanly feelings. They have been our nurturers and our teachers. They have sanctified the work, transforming drudgery into the noblest enterprises."
Elder Faust also said, "Homemaking is whatever you make of it. Every day brings satisfaction along with
some work which may be frustrating, routine, and unchallenging. But it is the same in the law office, the dispensary, the laboratory, or the store. There is, however, no more important job than homemaking. As C.S. Lewis said, "A housewife's work...is the one for which all others exist."
To read all of these wonderful quotes may inspire us in the moment which we read them, but as any mother knows there will come times when these ideas will be questioned in our minds. Our children will test us and
make us questions if we are indeed doing the most good in the world or if we are trying to move a sinking
ship. Thankfully the words Gordon B. Hinckley's father told him can help as we are overwhelmed and struggling at these times. He wrote in a letter to President Hinckley, "Forget yourself and go to work." As Rachel stated in her Blog "One of the best cures I have found in my own life is to pull myself up and do some routine, menial work. The idea of drudgery is the intimidating thing! But when we get up and go to work to help someone else, we come away revitalized, renewed--even full of purpose and energy."
She also cautioned the manner in which we use this answer saying, "it's also all in the attitude. The Savior never indulged in feelings of martyrdom, and neither should we! When we begrudgingly do housework, we are not serving our family. We are serving our own selfish needs to justify our anger and get everyone to feel sorry for us. But it does not work to make us feel better, nor for our family to appreciate us! Out efforts should be selfLESS, not selfish in nature. We only turn the cure to our unhappiness to poison when we work with an embittered heart."
Rachel also suggested, "if the idea of cleaning or working on housework makes you want to crumble up into a ball, and it's just something you can't make yourself do in that moment, then gather up your little ones into your lap and read them a small book. Or call a friend, a sister, or an aunt or your mother. Work on a project that you've been procrastinating. Go on a date with your husband. Most of all, PRAY for help, strength and renewal to do the ONE THING that the Lord would have you do in that moment of despair. Just DON'T give up!"
As I have kept these ideas in my mind the last few weeks I have realized that far too often I have not realized my place as the wife and mother in this family. I have often served with grumbling and disdain for my husband and children. I have wondered if, after years of those kind of feelings, that is why some couples divorce. It definitely cannot be good on a relationship for one spouse to resent another. That leads to the mistreatment of children and devaluing and mistreatment of ones spouse as well as ones self. When I think about the importance of serving to make my house a home I do find more joy in my service and I see things in a very different light. I see a hard working husband who comes home at the end of what is sometimes a very long day and I do want to lighten his load. I see the mistakes my children make as opportunities for learning instead of reasons to scold them and make them feel bad for adding to my load. I find I desire to make my home the happiest place on earth...even happier than Disneyland.
When women understand the beauty of the work we are called to do we realize that this work does not make us any less than a man. I recognize that not always is a woman blessed to be able to do this work at home. Sometimes her particular situation calls for her to bring an income into her home. In such a case women should be seen as equals and paid in wages equal to the male counterparts. However, when I read about women who feel there is not an equality within the LDS church I have to say I don't agree. Women have such a great influence in the world. How lucky men are to have their own unique calling withing the Priesthood to help them feel the importance of that same service we render. In reality when we understand the differences between men and women we realize they are truly equal partners in God's plan.
As it says in 1 Corinthians 11:11-12 "Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord. Far as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God."
"Motherhood is not what was left over after our Father blessed his sons with priesthood ordination. It was the most ennobling endowment he could give his daughters, a sacred trust that gave women an unparalleled role in helping his children keep their second estate. As President J. Reuben Clark Jr. declared, motherhood is 'as divinely called, as eternally important in its place as the Priesthood itself.'" -Sheri L. Dew
