This week in Sunday school a mother asked how to help her daughters gain a testimony of the gospel without being able to receive the priesthood. She wanted to know how to help young women beyond teaching them how to “bake bread.”
This is what I want my young women to know about their role in the church:
I’ve lived most of my life with my options open, sampling from the tasting menu instead of picking a venue, sitting down, and completing a meal. I tried the whole carpe diem thing, richoceted between reckless impulses on the supposed road to happiness. Live for yourself, consequences be damned.
All of that experience left me with this unshakable testimony: living for yourself is way overrated.
I spent the past week at the birthplace of Joseph Smith for Girls’ Camp, a religious summer camp for Mormon girls ages 11-18. Camp was centered around being BRAVE (an acronym for Be Righteous and Valiant Everyday), standing up for what we know is right, even if we have to stand alone. The theme was superheroes because they are not afraid to be themselves. Below is a talk gave during devotional the first night:
I have always written in the same way I have always lived; much of the writing and living were done in the slack-jawed, wild-eyed, wandering manner of a kid lost in Times Square.
My life has been blessed with a bit more clarity now, and I am no longer satisfied with regurgitating the first purposeless thoughts and words that bubble to the forefront of my mind. I want to become a better woman, wife and mother. That is my purpose and I’d like to bring that purpose to this blog.
So I’m changing the title.
I have Borderline Personality Disorder. Cute name. Not nearly as much fun as it sounds.
Ideas like “love” and “faith” sounded stupid and aggravating when I was an angry, depressed, teenage atheist. After I’d spent four years half-heartedly trying to be dead and realized I’d never have the guts to actually kill myself, the word “love” didn’t sound nearly as stupid. Desperation does magical things.
When I was 12 my family went snuba diving in Hawaii. It’s like scuba diving except you don’t need to be certified. Shallower water and your air tanks sit above you on a raft instead of on your back.
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Now that I’m a devout Mormon (… That thought still sends me reeling bit. I’m a what??) I find that people subconsciously dismiss my faith as something that comes easily and naturally to me.
