Degrees

I love my calling at church. I get to teach the 16-18 year old young women. They are really wonderful girls and today I had such a neat experience teaching them. We were talking about Lehonti in the Book of Mormon and how he was poisoned by degrees. He started out on the top of a mountain and refused to come down, but he gradually listened to the enticings of his enemy and was eventually overtaken and killed. I read to them a quote by Sister Elaine Dalton about how we as women and men could be poisoned 'by degrees' today, to be deceived and led astray in many different ways. She said,

"What could be more deceptive that to entice women, young and old, you and me, to be so involved in ourselves, our looks, our clothes, our body shape and size that we lose sight of our divine identity and our ability to change the world through our virtuous influence?"

As I looked into the eyes of these beautiful young women in front of me, I was overwhelmed with the great purpose that they and each of us as women have. I was so grateful to be able to bear my testimony to those sweet girls about what it means to be a woman and what our divine identity is. We are destined to be mothers for eternity....to be nurturers forever! What a magnificent purpose! I am so sad when I hear what the world tells us is important. I feel so sad when women have to prove that they are more than just mothers. What could possibly be more?! Whether we are mothers physically on this earth, or mothers in the heart, women are mothers! Motherhood is not just the act of bearing and raising children, it is a state of being. I think that mothering is love and that love extends far beyond our own families. I think that every woman has this gift of mothering in her....we either choose to nurture those feelings and learn how to develop our abilities to love and soothe and bless and serve, or we choose to quench those feelings and drown them out with the voices of the world. I believe, with Sister Dalton, that women who know and embrace their divine role can change the world through our virtuous influence! I want to lift my voice to the world and shout that I rejoice in my womanhood! I love being a woman! I want to choose to listen to the truth about who I am and not be deceived by the lies of satan, however small a degree of a lie it may be.