Sunday Lesson

 

   Mother's Day at church was has always been a challenge for me. It was worse when my mother and I were not speaking to each other. That part has improved, but it is still not my favourite day. 

   It's not that I have anything against a day honoring mothers, I firmly believe mothers should be honored in any way they choose on that day. No, my challenge is that in an attempt to be inclusive, I get treated as if I am a mother. This bothers me, a lot. For starters, I believe it is an insult to those who do have children. It's kind of like celebrating my birthday at somebody else's birthday party on a day that is not my birthday. I am quite comfortable with my childless status. I have plenty of opportunities to nurture that don't involve giving birth, adoption or fostering. I don't need to take a title that does not apply to me.

   One nice thing about my new calling is that I have an opportunity to influence or at least voice my option about certain things. One of them was the lesson on Mother's Day. I wanted the lesson to be inclusive, but in a way that made sense. I had listened to a podcast a shortly before we began planning for the lesson. One of the things that caught my ear was a comment that a woman made that while she is a mother, she did not want that to be the only thing that identified her.

   I pondered that thought off and on for several days. I thought of one woman at church who has eight children. I don't know her well, but the first thing I thought of was eight children. She has a chemistry degree, she can bake just about anything, she has forgotten more about home economics that I ever learned. She's kind, caring and a survivor of brain cancer. However when her name comes up, most people think about eight children.

   When we started planning the lesson, I mentioned this. I thought it might be nice if we could spotlight the ways women contribute to our ward and our community. There are many things that women do to contribute, motherhood being one of them. Mary, Ree, Astrid and I considered this idea and several others. 

  The lesson we came up with was a lesson on covenant women. Ree did some research about covenant women from Scripture and Mary led a discussion about how we keep our covenants today. Astrid and I with help from another woman who is very artistically gifted, came up with a visual. We gathered the names of all the women in Relief Society and Young Women's group. Along with those names we came up with a list of two to three words to describe each woman. These words and names were made into a design that twined a heart and a Celtic knot.  It was so beautiful and so perfect that I teared up when I saw it. It was more than I hoped for. It was perfect.

   We put the design on a bookmark and passed them out at the lesson. The lesson went well and several women sent messages of appreciation to Mary. I was happy that class wasn't the trial it usually is. (The cinnamon roll we got as treat made it even better.)