On the Role of Women in the Plan of Salvation

By A. Winegar


I have been asked to speak today on the role of women in the plan of salvation – for up to ten whole minutes. Knowing how contentious that subject has become in the last few years, I was tempted to ask for something a bit less controversial, such as middle eastern politics or national health care policy. And the ten minute time for such an encompassing topic means that of necessity, I will be forced to hit just the highlights – meaning that I will be lucky if I manage to somehow not offend at least 30 percent of the congregation today.

What is the role of women in the plan of salvation? Quite simply, it is to ensure that at least one spouse stays awake during Sacrament Meeting.

But let’s start with some ground rules. First, this IS a tricky, potentially offensive subject. Mostly because it focuses on such a generality. It seems to place those of my gender into a certain box – a box that we don’t really want to be in, and that we feel deprives us of recognition for our individual experiences. No-one, man or woman, wants to feel like our bodies determine our choices. Especially that part of our bodies. I dye my hair to feel younger, I wear heels to look taller, I straightened my teeth with braces, and I wear makeup. I can modify just about every part of my body, but the part that makes me a woman is not something I can control. So to be judged and categorized by it is as annoying as being considered dumb because I am a blond – which, by the way, I was before my hair started going gray. No, no-one likes to feel that their choices are determined by their bodies.

Second, none of this brief chat is intended to in any way diminish the high honor and respect I have for the role of men in the plan of salvation. I believe that one of the greatest failings of our society is its inability to see the value that both men and women bring to relationships. Can anyone name a single popular TV show – or even a recent book – that depicts a loving marriage of righteous equals? I can’t. Ozzy and Harriet went off the air 50 years ago, but I remember watching it (obviously as a re-run) and enjoying the healthy family it depicted. I am sorry that youth of today don’t know Ozzy and Harriet – I suggest seeking them out on Netflix or wherever they might be hiding. So my second ground-rule is that I do not intend to imply that by fully appreciating the role of women, we need to knock men down.

Third, I think we must recognize how extraordinarily blessed we are that this question can even be seriously contemplated. It is a reflection of our prosperity and to an extent our narcissism that we have the opportunity to ask. The poor peasant woman of a thousand years ago, in between dealing with cattle, kids and marauding Viking hordes probably did not spend much time philosophizing in between handing her husband homemade bread and a sharpened sword. He had the sword, she made the bread. Case closed. Gender roles were pretty clear. Only now, when faced with so much confusion about gender do we assign people to talk about it in church.

And finally, I very much appreciate the sacred covenants of the temple upon which both the family of my birth and the family Brother Winegar and I have raised were built. I know that not everyone here has benefited from that strong foundation. Nevertheless, much of our role, according to the prophets, is bound to our participation in marriage and family..

Ground rules established. Have I offended anyone yet? Just checking to see if you’re listening. The role of women in the plan of salvation:

Women are gatekeepers. A few years ago, my mother and I had the privilege to sit with my grandma in a tiny little Utah hospital as she died. She had been briefly ill, and we knew her life was nearing the end. That night, my mother and I decided to stay with her when everyone else in the family left. She was not conscious, but we talked to her and told her how much we loved her and we prayed. About three in the morning I stepped out of the room for a moment and walked around the floor of the hospital. I realized that the other half of the same hospital floor was labor and delivery. Just a few feet from us there were women beginning the journey of motherhood, and there were a bunch of female nurses for both geriatrics where we were and the new babies.

As far as I could tell, there was not a man in the place, except for an old patient or two. It struck me that this is what we women do: we help people in and out of life. We hold our arms open for the new ones and we hold the hands of those who are leaving. Charles Dickens said of little children: It is not a small thing that they, who are so fresh from God, love us. We have the errand of angels, to stand at the very gates of life.

From wikipedia.

Women are teachers and mentors. The Proclamation on the Family cites as the primary duty of a woman to nurture her family. They say necessity is the mother of invention – but we all know that the vast majority of all real inventions are created by men. But we create the men! It is awesome to watch a child grow and develop and even surpass your hopes. Can you imagine how that great inventor
Thomas Edison would have felt if the light bulbs he invented grew and became brighter and then left the factory and started making even brighter light bulbs of their own? Such a thing is unthinkable. But that is what happens with our children. The joy and delight that parents feel when they see their children develop is beyond description. As is the humility we feel on those occasions when our children exercise their agency to make choices of which we disapprove.

Image from wikipedia.

Which brings me to one of those roles that many of us women really sink our teeth into. We are sandpaperers. We often see it as our duty to polish off those rough edges we see in others. Most often and most particularly we work on those guys we spend the most time with. Sandpapering can look a lot like nagging. I myself am guilty of sandpapering people in my family more often than I should, and I apologize. While I think encouraging good behavior is one of a woman’s roles, I do want to stress that the best polish is done with a very fine touch and with the smoothest of sandpaper. I think we all need to work on that.

Women are settlers. In general, we are drawn to the tasks that transform a house into a home. That change ingredients into dinner. We make sure the cupboards are full, and that all the outlets have those little plug covers to keep kids from electrocuting themselves. We teach children to climb down the stairs instead of fall. We show them how to brush their teeth without eating the toothpaste. We can reinforce the best actions and words of others. We nurture. We safeguard. 

We care.

I want to tell you about the third worst day of my life. And for those of you who are now wondering, yes, I do have a list. This day was February 17, 1994. It was a Thursday. Here is the backdrop. Four kids, the oldest was James; he was 7 and severely disabled. The youngest was Izzi, just about 1. Sam and Allie were 3 and 5 years old, and they were your typical little whirlwind children: into everything, wanting attention, amusement and sometimes food. We were totally broke. Steve was working a second job, I was working part-time at night. We were both constantly exhausted. We barely ever saw each other. It was a tough time.

James had needed surgery in December 1993 and my parents had come then to take Izzi back to live with them in Tennessee on the day after Christmas a few months earlier. That was a year of ice storms and they were in a massive multi-car accident which injured Izzi’s back. She had returned to our family by February, but she was not quite a year old and she spent a lot of time crawling around and crying because her back hurt. On the other hand, James’s surgery to address feeding problems had led to a lot of – to be delicate – very smelly and messy digestive problems for him. We had to feed him 3 ounces of formula and 3 ounces of water every hour. About 15 minutes of every hour was spent feeding him and then the next 45 minutes it seemed that it all came back out through one end or the other, leaving a lot of mess for me to clean. It was so bad that his special ed school would not let him come back, as it was not sanitary. We had asked for home visits for therapy, and the school system said we needed to be evaluated in-home by a professional to make sure we were not cheating the system, or alternatively, abusing James.

Pictures of James. The author's remarks from his funeral can be found here.

The selected educational psychologist had scheduled several visits, but had canceled them at the last minute because of the icy weather that he did not want to drive in. At last a deadline approached and he scheduled the appointment for February 18. I had been inspected before by county agencies – you can’t have a disabled kid who falls a lot and ends up needing medical attention a few times just about every single month without having some child services person checking you out. So in preparation for the visit, I set about to really clean the house the day before, Thursday, the 17th, and I was planning to get busy on the dishes from breakfast and the night before when there was a knock at the door. I opened the door and there was this little, old, scowling man standing there. Judgmentally. Not happy to be there.

“I’m Doctor Brown, here for the evaluation.”

“It’s for tomorrow—“ I tried to position myself in the doorway so he could not see the mess behind me.

“Really? I must have made a mistake.”

I prepared to close the door. “I’m so sorry, Doctor. So I’ll see you tomorrow.” I was thinking: Please go away.

But he didn’t. Instead he said, “But I’m here now. And you’re here, and I am presuming that your… uh, son… is here.” He was trying to look around me into the house. “So let’s get it over with. There might be another storm tomorrow. Better to get it done.” Arguing was not going to result in James getting the help he needed. So I opened the door and in came Dr. Brown.

Image here.

He swept his eyes around the townhouse. Toys, books, laundry, broken lamp, dirty dishes. Stack of work on the kitchen desk. Gooey floor. Crying baby. Squawking toddler. Mischievous kindergartner. And James, sitting in his high chair in the kitchen, partly dressed in an old sweatshirt and just a diaper because keeping him clean was so hard and I was doing the laundry.

Let us just say that it was not the picture of household harmony and bliss that I would have liked.

Dr. Brown was a scowler, and scowl he did.

The purpose of the visit was to determine if James really was handicapped and in need of services, if we were treating him properly, and if we were lying about anything. Dr. Brown told me he needed to ask James a bunch of questions and give James the chance to answer before I could answer. James was 7 years old. I told Dr. Brown that James did not talk and I would end up answering all the questions anyway. But Dr. Brown said those were the rules. He had to ask James every question first. He spread his papers out on the table and began his evaluation of James’s skill levels. PS: James’s skill levels were basically none.

It was about 9 in the morning. I had the laundry out, and some things began: Can James do this?, the answers switched from yes to no pretty quickly. Right around the review of 24-month skills and realizing that James could do basically nothing that your average two-year-old finds to be a total cinch, including swallowing, I was becoming rather sad. The interview alone was draining me – and it lasted for FOUR HOURS.

You must also remember that I had to feed James every hour and that then the food all came back out one way or the other. So there were four hours of depressing questions from a scowling judgmental man. In the middle of an incredibly messy house. Izzy dragging herself around my feet and crying. Allie popping in every few minutes to report that Sam had just twisted off Barbie’s arms, or that he had pulled out all the books from the shelf to build a freeway for his cars, or that he had thrown something at her, or that she really really needed help with an art project – Since you’re busy, you don’t mind if I paint flowers on the bathtub with nail polish and glitter, do you? That sort of thing. Izzy crying and dragging herself around. Gooey floor. Dishes. Depressing questions. Nasty smelly formula going into James. Nastier smellier stuff coming back out and getting all over the table and the chair and the floor and me. I sat between James and Dr. Brown at the table, and I fed and I wiped. I changed Izzy’s diaper once and James three times during this interview. James was actually not that much bigger than she was. I just lifted him down and did it right there on the floor in front of the doctor so that we could get the evaluation over with. Sam was not quite potty trained, so he stopped in for a change at some point. So four hours and five diapers. Scowling doctor. Crying. Mischief. Art projects. Laundry.

Depressing questions.

“We’re just about done with the interview portion,” Dr. Brown announced at about 1:10.

Portion?!? I thought. I can’t take much more of this. I was trying so hard to not break into tears from the emotion, the noise, the kids, the all of it. “What’s left?” I asked.

“I need to evaluate James’s physical abilities,” he said. Well, that shouldn’t take long, I thought.

James basically didn’t have any, especially right then.

“You said he can walk,” Dr. Brown said.

“Yes, he can. Not very fast, maybe, but he can.”

“I want to see that,” he said.

I think I shrugged a bit. James was so weak recovering from his surgery I was not sure if he would be able to do very much. But I lifted him out of his chair and stood him on the floor. The doctor had not really seen him standing yet. He was so thin. He weighed less than 40 pounds and he came to about my chest. I supported him and then started to let James adjust to standing so he wouldn’t just fall over. So I was facing James when there was this sploosh sound from below and the floor became even messier. Using one hand to support James’s chest, I grabbed a paper towel from where a roll sat on the kitchen table and I bent down to wipe at the sploosh and James threw up on my head.

“I’ve seen enough,” the doctor announced. He closed his files briskly like he was slamming them, but they were paper so no real sound. “I’ll be going.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what to say about all this. If you’d just waited until tomorrow…”

“Oh, James clearly qualifies for therapy. And as for you, well I have been very impressed with your patience and gentleness today. I am a bit surprised no-one has recommended YOU for therapy.”

He left. I had goo on my feet, and in my hair, and James was a mess and I had to take care of that, and then there was the rest of them. I couldn’t just leave the bunch of them and run to the shower for a detailed scrubbing. I rinsed my head in the kitchen sink. I did what I could to clean up and settle everyone down. At some point I just collapsed onto the laundry-covered couch and thought, What am I doing? What has happened to my life? What is to become of me?

And then I had a revelation.

What am I doing? I am proving that I want a celestial life. Because that is a life of service. Of putting yourself second. Of thinking of others’ needs before your own. Of fixing things that are broken. Of cleaning things that are dirty. Of helping the weak and teaching the strong. Of giving of yourself in every way. Of loving others who poop on you. Of understanding that sin is the greatest disability, because it keeps Heavenly Father’s children from progressing the way they should. This experience is helping me to learn the importance of physical bodies, of devotion, of selflessness, of obedience, of endurance. Those are the qualities of a celestial person. Celestial people do not quit.

What is the role of women in the plan of salvation? It is the same as the role of men: to work out our salvation in humility and righteousness before the Lord. But perhaps we girls have a little bit more. We have the opportunity to stand in the shadow of the Godhead in a way that men do not. Like our Heavenly Father, we are creators. We create our children and the very world they live in. For at least a few years of their lives, we know everything and can do anything. We are omnipotent to them.

Like Jesus, we are called to sacrifice. Sometimes that means sacrificing a lifetime of effort, but countless women have died bearing and protecting their children.

And finally, like the Holy Ghost, we are the comforters. We feed, and warm, and snuggle.

Remember when I said that we don’t like to think that our bodies determine our choices? Well, to a point they do. But more importantly, our choices determine our bodies and our future as children of our Heavenly Father.

I want to be a celestial person. I want to be a good daughter to my earthly father and my Heavenly Father. I want to be a good wife and mother. Those are the roles I have chosen. They are not easy. A lot of paper towels and Kleenex and prayer have been involved. I am grateful for the gospel in my life and for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which allows me to repent and progress and to build an eternal family. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.