Women's Issues

As women of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), we are dedicated to "strengthening marriages, families, and homes." We live in a day when more than 50% of marriages in our country fail, dividing families, and wrecking homes. Latter-day Saint women are not left to their own devices, or the offerings of a crumbling culture, to fortify the marriage, family, and home. We have a prophet and God uses him to help us strengthen our marriages, families, and homes. We also have the Holy Ghost to help us apply this general counsel to our specific family's needs.

I have been working on my Master's Degree in Education. A few days ago, a friend asked about my thesis/project. I shared that as a society, parents have pushed their children into education, with little thought of teaching them how to build a happy marriage, manage family, and home. Education is important, but not to the exclusion of home and family. The result has been high divorce rates, broken homes, and dysfunctional families. Many fathers do not seem to know how to be fathers, many mothers do not seem to know how to be mothers, most struggle with debt, and few know how to maintain a home. I became LDS when I was a senior in high school, and had been raised in a home broken by divorce. The woman I was talking to is a divorcee. She said that her son needed a man in his life to help teach him how to be a man. Then she asked, "Donna, what is the solution?" Though my thesis deals primarily with the lost arts and relationships that were once nurtured in the home, I feel the best solution is found in gospel living.

Where can a person learn what they need to be a better spouse and parent, especially if they were never taught? Some of the resources the Lord has blessed us with are:

The Scriptures teach about healthy family relationships and standards of gospel living, and when the counsel found in scriptures are heeded, bring happiness into our lives.

The Family: A Proclamation to the World teaches us principles of happy families.

General, Stake, and Ward Conferences are where we are taught standards of gospel living and we receive counsel for families, marriages, and relationships.

Relief Society and Young Women’s organizations help women strengthen testimonies through gospel teaching and teach women how to be good daughters, sisters, wives, mothers, and neighbors, as well as, skills that can help us with home, family, personal enrichment, and with provident living.

Visiting Teaching is a way to strengthen each other as women and give encouragement to women in their roles as sisters, daughters, wives, mothers, and neighbors.

The Priesthood and Young Men's organizations teach men how to administer the temporal affairs of the God’s Kingdom on earth, and how to be good sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, and neighbors.

Home Teachers can be a great blessing to single mothers, widows, families, and individual women. They teach, assist, and bless.

The Primary organization reinforces the teachings of the home and helps children be better, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, and neighbors.

The home is the schoolroom and laboratory where these core values and skills are learned and refined. The Lord has provided families with additional helps:

The Family Guidebook teaches parents principles of establishing a happy home.

A Parent’s Guide helps parents understand good parenting practices.

The Family Home Evening Resource Manual is an excellent resource for families to use to teach gospel principles in the home, in weekly family home evenings.

With all of these wonderful examples and resources, I feel God’s love and guidance in my life and I feel strengthened and guided to be a better mother.

I know I just wrote about Becoming Mary. And that’s an excellent goal. We should be more like her. But today I’m thinking that becoming Martha really isn’t all that bad either. In two weeks, my husband’s rather large family is coming to stay with us. Over Thanksgiving weekend there will be about 40 us living in my house and eating Thanksgiving dinner. And while I am looking forward to it immensely (Who doesn’t just love to see all the cousins playing together?!), it also means that I have to clean my house. And not just a regular cleaning like when people come to visit and you make it look nice. This needs to be a deep down, soul-cleansing, cleaning because they’ll be living here and opening up my cupboards and cooking in my kitchen and sleeping in my children’s bedrooms.

So I just have to put this out there. If I were the type of woman who COULD keep my house that clean, it would already be that clean. Know what I mean? So in the spirit of Holiday Preparations, my children and I spent the entire day yesterday cleaning and getting ready for major houseguests. Of course, I have to start two weeks ahead of time because I don’t actually know how to mess with the time/space continuum to really give myself the time I need. But you just do the best you can with you’ve got. That’s why my seven children and I got to work yesterday.

And you know what? My house is by no means perfect yet. Ha! Seven children live here, after all! But at least the main level of the house is looking really good and it’s comfortable and nice. This morning as I am enjoying how wonderful it is, I feel like I could use a little more Martha in me. Martha was a woman who saw what needed doing and got it done. She wasn’t afraid of hard work and knew it was her job to see that it got done. Maybe she even had seven children.

I was mentioning to someone a week ago that I wasn’t the World’s Greatest Housekeeper and I was a failure at all things crafty and I don’t decorate. Just don’t go there. And the person responded that everyone is different and maybe keeping an orderly house wasn’t my strength, but maybe I played lots of games with my children and read them books frequently or maybe instead of spending all that time cleaning I was out visiting the sick and the needy. And for a split second that made me feel better about myself.

But then I realized the wrong assumption. The assumption is that if you aren’t Mary, then you are Martha. If you aren’t Martha, then you are Mary. The truth of the matter is, I love my kids dearly. But I’m not very good at playing with them or reading them books either. Just because my house is messy doesn’t necessarily mean that the time I “should” be cleaning is spent in worthwhile ways. Honestly, most of the time I feel like I am neither Mary nor Martha. I’m the clueless next door neighbor who didn’t even realize the Savior and his disciples were visiting and I was busy gossiping with the woman from down the street.

Now, I’ve told you some of weaknesses. But I do realize that God has blessed me with strengths also. It just so happens that I have trouble with my personal scripture study and prayer AND with keeping my house clean. I just don’t think any of my strengths fall into the Martha/Mary continuum.

This morning as I am sitting in a really neat and tidy home enjoying the fruits of my Saturday labor, I’m just realizing that we don’t have to become Mary at the expense of losing our Martha. In fact, I’m thinking that a little more Martha would be a great blessing in my life--becoming Martha without worrying about what the Marys are doing.