The roles of Men and Women

Lately I’ve been thinking about this experience that I had when Josh and I were engaged. We were on a tour of the conference center in SLC and there were a couple of people in our tour that were not LDS. Our guide was talking about the prophets and the priesthood. A lady asked why women didn’t hold the priesthood in our church. Our guide said, “Well, I don’t mind not holding the priesthood.” That was it. I was so taken back by, what I thought was, an inadequate answer that I didn’t even have time to try to reconcile any damage she had just possibly done. Instead I’ve just spent years thinking about this experience and wondering if I had actually been able to say something if that lady would have understood how revered women are in the LDS church. I think that if I were to ever meet that woman again I would tell her that women don’t hold the priesthood because that is not our role as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I would tell her that as men and women we all have different roles and that goes for the church too. For lack of a better example, if we were all plug ins and there were no outlets for us to be plugged into, nothing would work. We would all try to do the same job, but couldn’t reach our full potential because without the outlet…we can’t work. Men have many roles including that of the priesthood, but without us women, they are incomplete and would not be able to perform to their full potential. How sad it is that society has looked upon being a “stay at home mom” (household manager is the term I like) as being oppressed and not being able to reach a woman’s full potential. When I look at the world today, it is very apparent to me that now, more than ever, there is the need for women to live up to their roles as mothers and nurture their children. Does that mean that a woman has to be a stay at home mom in order to be a good mother? I sure hope not because I, in fact, am a working mother. I work out of necessity for our family. However, it’s how we spend that time with our children and what we teach them that we need to focus on. I supposed that the true test will come when my children leave the home. The bottom line of my entire point making is that men and women have different roles – in society, in homes, and in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We are equal in our roles. The plug in is not better than the outlet, but merely has a different function. And because men and women are different, our roles will never be exactly the same. And though our roles are different, our goal is always unified.