Last Sunday the Relief Society lesson was on the Restoration of the Priesthood. The only thing I really learned from the lesson is that single women in the church are clueless about it… including myself to a certain extent. The teacher did the best she could, but it was obvious we don’t understand it.
We don’t understand it because for most of us it isn’t a constant in our lives. I don’t know that the single men around us understand it. It is probably something that they continue to understand… However, I think their understanding is better than ours because they have been learning about it since they were 12.
I think the way women understand it has to be through experience. Some of us have grown up in homes with dads that honored it… but we haven’t been blessed by it or experienced it from the perspective of partners… I think if our fathers honored it we don’t know how to distinguish that from just normal dad stuff.
So what I am trying to say is that we are clueless. This really bothers me. It bothers me because I was looking around me at a roomful of women… most of us independent and able to take care of ourselves… or something… Earlier during the Sunday school lesson there was a discussion about what we owe God. Of course everyone that spoke said everything… How does this correlate?
Men have the priesthood for lots of reasons… but the one that really matters to me is that it helps them know how to help me. I have had several discussions lately with a friend about how men innately want to serve and protect women. I know I was socialized to not accept this help. I was socialized to be independent. An ex-boyfriend once told me that I am so independent that I don’t need anyone. As I listened to him I thought I tried to express my desperate need for people, but my inability to receive. I am pretty disabled in the category of receiving help. This is a BIG deal for me. So I have been thinking… asking… trying to understand men… wanting to get past this independence block that keeps me from being blessed by them…
Had this dream last night… In the dream I was trying to get somewhere to help someone who was desperate for my assistance. In a borrowed car I went to help. I parked the car and went into a building to ask for directions. Since the car was borrowed I forgot what it looked like and lost it in a huge parking lot. I wandered around for hours it seemed. Finally a man crossed my path and offered his help. He looked at the key and instantly knew how to find the car. That was the end of the dream.
From the conversations I have had with my friend I have understood intellectually (sort of) how good men are able to help women. If they are honoring their priesthood they are even that more effective at helping women… if women will let them… Like in the dream a man can help me… even though eventually I am capable of figuring it out, they just make my journey that much easier. If I am not wasting time trying to do something that isn’t easy for me, that is less time I am spending doing what I am really good at… The man in my dream helped me in seconds. It is not because he was better, smarter, or even necessarily stronger… He just had natural abilities that I don’t have… I can develop those abilities, but why? There are other things that I am way better at. Other things that I enjoy doing and that help other people.
After having this dream and thinking… thinking… thinking about it… I had this crazy day… I can’t really say what happened … but I felt really threatened and I didn’t feel safe. I was pretty scared b/c I was alone with someone so unstable I couldn’t predict what he would/could do. As soon as I was at a location with other people I contacted my boss for help. She told me to leave and retrieve a man that I work with. I did. As soon as I saw him I started to cry. Nothing bad happened, but in the situation I felt very vulnerable. My co-worker was totally supportive by just doing his thing. Later at different times two other men at work offered their help in very protective appropriate ways. I felt so grateful for these men whose instincts push them to protect the women around them. If this is how great men are at taking care of women naturally how much better they must be when their natural instincts have that extra oomph of the priesthood… as in the power of God working through them, helping them to do what needs to be done to take care of the women around them…
It is a pretty big deal. I am glad that we are different and that I have my role and they have theirs… I am pretty good and getting better at doing my woman thing… I am so glad that there are men out their equally working on improving their man thing…
That’s all.
so... it seems i am not as popular with little rayray as i had hopped... he doesn't totally understand the automatic red-head connection just yet...
other photos... my dad fishing... look real close... i think he was waiting on an important phone call... i love those things that people attach to their ears... makes everyone look more important no matter their every day activity...
so i was reading in the last part of Nephi about how Nephi really wants to make sure that specifically his words survive the generations. That is, that his children's children's children have them... and of course God tells him that the words will be preserved...
