Paisley: Hi everybody, welcome back. Paisley, imperfect hair.
After I read that quote the other day from sister
Nadauldstalk, the one that Elder Christofferson quoted in his
talk, I decided to go back and read sister talk. I found it in
the October 2000 General Conference, in case you want to
go back and read it yourself, which I totally recommend. I
always recommend that you read the talks yourself, and I'll
make sure that there's a link in the video description. But what
I liked most about the talk were the four different ways that she
gave us for recognizing women who are grateful to be daughters
of God. I thought that was an interesting approach, and she
prefaces it with this statement. She said, our outward appearance
is a reflection of what we are. On the inside, our lives reflect
that for which we seek, and if, with all our hearts we truly
seek to know the Savior and to be more like Him we shall be for
he is our divine, eternal brother, but he is more than
that. He is our precious Savior, our dear Redeemer. We ask with
Alma of old, have you received his image in your countenances?
And then, using these four different ways to recognize this
type of a woman, the type that is grateful to be a daughter of
God, she tells us what it means to have his image in our
countenance. So the first thing she said, You can recognize
women who are grateful to be a daughter of God by their outward
appearance. These women understand their stewardship
over their bodies and treat them with dignity. They care for
their bodies as they would a holy temple. And I feel like I
say this every episode. Listen, I am not here to judge you.
That's not my job. That's not what I want to do. I'm not here
to judge you and how many tattoos you have or how many
earrings you're wearing in every one of your ears, or what kind
of clothes you wear. You're the only one that's gonna have to
answer that it's none of it's none of my business. So you go
do you, and you wear whatever you want, wear as many earrings
as you want, get as many tattoos. That's up to you. I'm
not here to judge that you do you. She goes into more detail,
but sums it up nicely with this, grateful daughters of God guard
their bodies carefully, for they know they are the wellspring of
life, and they reverence life. They don't uncover their bodies
to find favor with the world. So in other words, if you want to
be recognized as a daughter of God, dress the part. Second. You
can recognize women who are grateful to be a daughter of God
by their attitude. They know that the errand of angels is
given to women, and they desire to be on God's errand, to love
his children and minister to them, to teach them the
doctrines of salvation, to call them to repentance, to save them
in perilous circumstances, to guide them in the performance of
his work to deliver his messages. Now, I kind of smirked
a little bit when I was putting my thoughts together for this
one. And my husband was like, what's that smirk on your face
for? And I was like, well, because I'm reading this quote,
you can recognize women who are grateful to be a daughter of God
by their attitude. They know that the Aaron of angels is
given to women. That's a line from as sisters in Zion, one of
our hymns, right? And they desire to be on the god on God's
Aaron, to love his children and minister to them, the Aaron of
angels. I started thinking about the angels that we know about,
right? The ministering angels, if you will, the messenger
angels. I thought of Moroni. He was the first one to come to
mind. Do you sometimes feel like Moroni? Like you got to go tell
this 14 year old kid the same thing four times. And I don't
mean to like, I don't mean to be sacrilegious about it. I just
kind of caught a little sense of humor in it. Like, do you feel
like Moroni who goes and tells the same message over and over
and over again? Um, or how about the angel that stopped Laman and
Lemuel from beating up on their little brothers? I can't even
tell you how many, how many fights I stopped between my
girls today, or maybe more like the angel Gabriel, who told
Elizabeth that she was gonna have a son deliver some good
news, right? Or and then, and then he went, and he told Mary
that she was gonna have a son. And that was probably shock and
awe that was probably a little overwhelming for Mary, anyway,
so it just kind of made me smart for a second, this Aaron of
angels, and then I read it again, right? They know that the
Aaron of Angel. Is given to women, and they desire to be on
God's errand, to love his children and minister to them,
which is the spirit that comes along with that line in the hymn
that you're that we're here to love each other and minister to
each other, and then to teach them the doctrines of salvation
that is part of the errand that we're on right to teach them the
doctrines of salvation, to call them to repentance, to save them
in perilous circumstances, to guide them in the performance of
his work, to deliver his messages. So the errand of
angel, the errand of angels, isn't just sunshine and
rainbows. It's work. We have to actually do stuff anyway. So you
can recognize women who are grateful to be a daughter of God
by their attitude. They want to do these things. Moving on to
number three, you can recognize women who are grateful to be a
daughter of God by their abilities. They fulfill their
divine potential and magnify their God given gifts, they are
capable strong women who bless families, serve others and
understand that the glory of God is intelligence. And that last
bit is quoted from Doctrine and Covenants. 9336 and I don't want
to misinterpret what she's saying here, so if I do
apologies, sounds to me, though, like she's saying that you'll be
able to tell because of how they work. So she said you'll be able
to tell by their abilities. And the follow up to that makes it
sound to me like you'll be able to tell by how they work, what
they do, what they actually do, versus what they're capable of.
So someone who is grateful to be a daughter of God works hard and
sometimes does more than what she's capable or what she thinks
she's capable of, versus someone who may not be grateful and
takes advantage of the system. I hope that makes sense. Lastly,
number four, and I'm going to quickly place a trigger warning
right here, if you are, if you are struggling with or have
struggled with and aren't quite ready yet. If you've struggled
with infertility and you're not quite ready to hear about it, by
all means, skip ahead a little bit. But please know that this
quote is relevant to you in the best possible way. It's still it
still may be difficult, but it is relevant to you in the in the
best possible way. You are seen and you are heard. She said, You
can recognize women who are grateful to be a daughter of God
by their reverence for motherhood, even when that
blessing has been withheld from them for a time, in those
circumstances, their righteous influence can be a blessing in
the lives of children they love. Their exemplary teachings can
echo the voice of a faithful home and resonate truth in the
hearts of children who need another witness, whether you're
a mother or not, you can have an influence on children, and you
can still have a reverence for motherhood, whether you have
experienced it or are experiencing it. And I'm going
to take a little bit of a leap here and say that those who
have, those of us who have struggled with infertility, or
who do struggle with infertility, are very, very well
aware of the importance of motherhood, sometimes, in my
opinion, Even more so than those who have not struggled what we
are aware on a level that causes pain, and that is a pain that is
so deep that Only our willingness to begin to learn
how to use the atonement can help ease that pain, and that's
why I loved this quote so much. She recognized that, and instead
of spending the entire paragraph talking about women will want to
be mothers and women will become mothers. That's not at all what
she talked about. She talked about reverencing motherhood as
the divine role and gift that it is.
But she also talked about how I. We can influence all of those
around us, whether we're their moms or not. She didn't limit
it. Limit it. She didn't limit it to our own children. She also
said, daughters of God know that it is the nurturing nature of
women that can bring everlasting blessings, and they live to
cultivate this divine attribute. It's not just about being a mom,
it is about developing the nurturing nature of women. I
want to go ahead and end today's episode with the quote that
brought us here in the first place. Elder Christofferson
quoted her, but I'm going to read the talk. I'm going to read
the quote directly from her talk, because there was a
sentence that he left out that I loved. She said, women of God
can never be like women of the world. The world has enough
women who are tough. We need women who are tender. There are
enough women who are coarse. We need women who are kind. There
are enough women who are rude. We need women who are refined.
We have enough women of fame and fortune. We need more women of
faith. We have enough greed. We need more goodness. We have
enough vanity, we need more virtue. We have enough
popularity, we need more purity. So what kind of a woman are you
going to be? I'm going to be the kind of woman who is constantly
in a state of work in progress. I'm going to try and become the
kind of woman who is strong and tender, good and refined. I got
some work to do on that one, a woman of faith. That's the kind
of woman I want to be. I feel like this lifetime. In this
lifetime, I'm going to be a constant work in progress, one
little piece at a time, right? Anyway, thank you so much for
being here today. I appreciate your time. Keep learning, keep
growing, and be of good cheer until next time you.