I Am A Woman

I am writing this post for myself and my family.  It does not matter to me if anyone else in the world reads it. I just have an overwhelming desire to put my feelings into actual words, rather than thoughts swimming through my head.  As the world continues to shift and change in a very rapid pace, I find my mind spinning with all that is around me.  I want my family to know that I love the role my Father and Heaven has given me.  I am a woman.  That is powerful in it's own right.  I do not feel the need to have the same responsibilities of a man.  On my own, I have been given blessings, talents, and the beautiful blessings of marriage and a family.  My marriage is a partnership with my husband and with God.  I have never felt less important than my husband in God's view. My father has always loved and respected my mother and his daughters, a true blessing in my life.  I am eternally grateful for the opportunity that I have to be a mother, to give birth to precious, perfect spirits fresh from His presence, something a man will never experience.  And yet together, as husband and wife, we are one.  I value the role of my husband and appreciate the priesthood that he honors and holds.  Together, we worship in the temple  and pray for our family.  I am thankful that my husband values and respects womanhood and it's divinely appointed attributes and qualities.  I firmly believe that God has a plan for me and His love for me, as a woman, is perfect, pure and eternal. I appreciate the women of the past who were strong, wonderful examples.  I appreciate the rights and freedoms that I have here, in the country that I love.  I know that it is by the grace of The Almighty that I have these rights.  I do not believe that the feminist movements of today coincide with the Women's Suffrage Movement of the late 1800's & early 1900's. Rather, today there is an indignant cry not for equality, but of supremacy. I do not need the world to tell me that I am valued.  I do not need social groups or organizations to give me a purpose in this life, nor in the life to come.  I may not understand everything, but I know, really know that I have a divine purpose and role in my Heavenly Father's eternal plan.  I will not yield to the voices that are screaming all around me.  I will strive to "be still and know that He is God" and I will stand for "Truth and Righteousness".  There is not a doubt in my mind that Heavenly Father knows and loves every single person who has or will ever life on this earth.  I will stand for what I know to be true in my heart and I will not be swayed by social or political agendas. I will take the Divinely given gifts that I have and I will love my family.  I will raise my boys to respect, appreciate, and honor women.  I will raise my daughter with the confidence that she has divine potential and has so much to share with the world and with a family of her own some day.

“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 first realization of affection; her sympathy and tenderness, the first assurance that there is love in the world.”   

                                                                                                                                       President David O. McKay