Heavenly Mother, Are You Really There?

“In the heav’ns are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare; Truth is reason—truth eternal tells me I’ve a mother there.”

We've been told She exists. We've been told she is equal to Her husband. We've been told women were created in Her image. We've been told that the church recognizes her Godhood.

And we've been told we're not allowed to talk to her.

We're supposed to follow the pattern of Christ, right? And Christ told us to "always pray unto the Father in my name." But can we just focus for a second on the fact that a quadruple combination of scriptures only contains about 3,900 pages, and that there is a very real possibility that Jesus had more to say than that in his roughly 35 years on the earth? Can we at least consider that he might have had more to say on the subject of his relationship with his Mother in Heaven, and that it was simply left out of scripture for the mere fact that men didn't think it was that important (much like men didn't think women in general were that important for most of history)? Can we agree that Jesus telling us to pray to the Father is not the same as telling us not to pray to the Mother?

I look at prayer as an opportunity to build a relationship with God. And there are TWO Gods I want to build a relationship with. If they are equals, and they both were responsible for creating me, why am I only allowed to worship one of them?

People in the church often talk of Heavenly Mother as if she is in need of being hidden from, or protected by the language of man. But I don't think she's that weak. I don't think our Heavenly Mother needs to be protected in that way. If She is who we truly believe She is, our Mother went through hell and high water to make it to where She is now, and I cannot for the life of me believe that something as simple as imperfect children taking Her name in vain would jeopardize her divine Godhood. She is not a wallflower.

Our Mother in Heaven is the greatest example we have of a strong woman. She can take it.

We have been taught in the church that motherhood is a woman's most sacred calling. In The Family: A Proclamation to the World it states that "mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children." If we are created in the image of God, and our family units are modeled after our Heavenly Father and Mother, wouldn't it make sense that the nurturing of our mortal lives be the primary responsibility of our Mother in Heaven?  

How can She nurture us if we aren't allowed to build a relationship with Her?

If we DO have a Mother in Heaven, there's just no scenario in which it would make sense that She wouldn't involve Herself in our lives, and want us to reach out to Her on an individual level. I cannot imagine how it must feel for Her to send each of Her children away, and only ever hear how we are doing through Her husband. I do not believe Heavenly Father wants to be a middle man.

If we truly believe that our Heavenly parents are equals, then praying to both of them individually, or worshipping both of them would not offend the other. As a mother, I would hope that my husband would encourage our children to have a relationship with me, as I would encourage their relationship with him. Our Heavenly parents are no different (except that they're totally perfect parents...I mean, there is that.)

These days, I'm much more mindful in my conversations with God, and even more mindful that (to me), "God" is plural.