I Am Wrong, I Am Invisible, I Am Woman

In the world (at least in my tiny American white girl bubble), the list of possibilities as a woman feels almost endless. Women can be doctors, CEO's and business owners. Women can buy their own cars and houses. Women can even adopt a child or choose to raise biological ones on their own. Sure, statistically speaking, men make more money and physically they are stronger. I won't sit here and hash out the differences between men and women, because the fact is: men and women are essential for different reasons.

And those differences are beautiful.

I think it's fair that we recognize the world has had to change A LOT for this to happen. It wasn't very long ago that women weren't able to do any of the things I listed above. Nevertheless, the world has finally figured out (mostly) that women are just as important as men. But not at church. At church we women are still just as unimportant as we ever were.

Do you know what happens if you search "Women in the church" in the Gospel Library? Try it. I'll wait. See that pretty little article that comes up at the top? In it you'll find a list of all the wonderful things women can do in the church. Notice how short it is?

Over the years I have become increasingly more aware of my lack of ability to be much of anything as a woman in the church. It was never something I could explain properly either. Any time I tried to bring it up I'd be hit with questions like, "What then? You want women to have the priesthood or something?" I really couldn't put my feelings into words, because women having the priesthood was never a desire for me.  I never wanted, and still don’t want to have priesthood responsibilities myself. (And let's be real...most men don't even WANT those responsibilities themselves.) But....the idea of only men being in true leadership roles is something I could never sit happily with. 

There is not ONE decision in the church a woman can make without being overruled by a man. There are many positions in church leadership which do not require priesthood keys, and yet many of those positions go unfilled because there are no men to fill them, and women are not allowed to.

Women in the church have been told for years that we are equal, but the truth is, it doesn’t feel that way. 

It doesn’t feel equal that a woman can’t preside over a congregation or conduct if a man is present. It doesn’t feel equal that a Relief Society president cannot make final decisions about what is best for the women in her auxiliary. A man can always gets the final say. It doesn’t feel equal, (or appropriate for that matter), that a teenage girl has to speak to a man about her sexual sins in detail when a teenage boy doesn’t have to speak to a woman about his at all. It doesn't feel equal that our handbook doesn't even mention women in it's description on requirements to build a stake or ward (In case you were wondering what it says: “Stakes will need 150 active, full-tithe-paying Melchizedek Priesthood holders capable of serving in leadership positions. They will also need a total of 500 participating adults.”)

Women could be clerks. They could be Sunday school presidents. Women could budget and conduct meetings, or lead the prayer circle in the temple. Allowing women to do these things disrupts no doctrinal teachings.

However, allowing women to do these things WOULD greatly disrupt the belief that women aren't as important as men at church. For years, women have been labeled "apostate" if they spoke up about this. (Someone called me this just a couple days ago, in fact.) But...let's focus for a moment on words from our Prophet, President Russell M. Nelson. In October of 2018's General Conference, during his address entitled "Sisters' Participation in the Gathering of Israel," President Nelson stated: “My dear sisters, you have spiritual gifts and propensities. … I urge you, with all the hope of my heart, to pray to understand your spiritual gifts—to cultivate, use, and expand them, even more than you ever have. You will change the world as you do.”

If we, as women, don't recognize our own worth, and we don't fight for the opportunities to do what our prophet has spoken here, our world within the church will never change.

We can't expect that God will just throw revelation at President Nelson and tell him to change these things. D&C 9:7 tells us: "Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me." How can we expect God to change things for women in the church if our prophet doesn't ask? And how can we expect our prophet to ask God for revelation if he doesn't know we feel this way?  

It's time to open your mouth. 

It's time women of the church cultivate, use, and expand those spiritual gifts our God gave to us.  

We were told we would change the world. Let's change it.