**As I read through this post my heart is tender for each of you and your specific circumstances. I know there are heavy hearts and unanswered prayers. There are weighty challenges and circumstances that are out of your control. Despite your best efforts and endless prayers you feel stuck, alone, unseen, forgotten, and ungifted. Please believe me when I tell you: you are not forgotten. He is aware of you. He is there, in the fog, just beyond your fingertips. You have gifts, some undeveloped, some forgotten, some unused for a time. You my dear friend are so needed, loved, and gifted. Truly.**
As I looked at a previous post I realized it is quite complementary to this week. I talked about being able to be different from each other and yet have no division among us. This week Paul talks about spiritual gifts. If there is one thing that easily causes division is comparison when it comes to the dispersement of gifts. I think I’ll just start with a quote from Sister Patricia Holland:
For many years, I tried to measure the oft times quiet, reflective, thoughtful Pat Holland against the robust, bubbly, talkative, and energetic Jeff Holland and others with like qualities. I have learned through several fatiguing failures that you can’t have joy in being bubbly if you’re not a bubbly person. It is a contradiction in terms. I have given up seeing myself as a flawed person because my energy level is lower than Jeff’s and I don’t talk as much as he does, nor as fast. Giving this up has freed me to embrace and rejoice in my own manner and personality in the measure of my creation. Ironically, that has allowed me to admire and enjoy Jeff’s buoyance, even more. Somewhere, somehow the Lord blipped the message onto my screen that my personality was created to fit precisely the mission and talents He gave me. For example, the quieter, calmer talent of playing the piano reveals much about the real Pat Holland. I would never have learned to play the piano if I hadn’t enjoyed the long hours of solitude required for its development. This same principle applies to my love of writing, reading, meditation, and especially teaching and talking with my children. Miraculously, I have found that I have untold abundant sources of energy to be myself, but the moment I indulge in imitation of my neighbor, I feel fractured and fatigued and find myself forever swimming upstream. When we frustrate God’s plan for us, we deprive this world and God’s kingdom of our unique contributions and a serious schism settles in our soul. God never gave us any task beyond our ability to accomplish it. We just have to be willing to do it our own way. We’ll always have enough resources for being who we are and what we can become.
LDS Women’s Treasury: Insights and Inspiration for Today’s Woman, p.98
She also said:
Satan is executing a full-blown blitz, waging war against Latter-day Saint women. All that Satan can wield is minuscule in comparison to a woman or man of God who possesses spiritual gifts. If I were Satan, I would keep women so distraught and distracted that they would never find calming strength and serenity, catching them in the crunch of trying to be superhuman instead of realistically striving to reach their individual purpose and unique God-given potential. We must have the courage to be imperfect.
“One Thing Needful”: Becoming Women of Greater Faith in Christ
In line with “the courage to be imperfect” is the courage to be different than others: different than our neighbors, our sisters, our mothers, our friends, those we admire, those who possess gifts we’d like ourselves, those with opportunities, or children, or a spouse, or money, or possessions that we ourselves have prayed for. We must have courage to be an “uncomely” part of the body of Christ and trust that there is a purpose for us to fulfill there.
I loved the analogy from DMT of Christ being pure white light and that light being shone through a prism. That prism will split the light into a wide spectrum of colors casting beauty on the receiving surface. Only Christ possesses all eternal spiritual gifts and uses them in perfection. We have been given pieces of His light to shine on His behalf, bringing light, enlightenment, beauty, compassion, love, and all manner of other gifts to others and ourselves. I love how Grace put it “the very best parts of us are Him.”
Follow Him talks in depth about the gifts that Paul identifies, as well as lesser known gifts, and the need and value of all gifts. I would highly recommend listening to it if you have the time.
I also loved the discussion on Follow Him about 1 Cor. 11:3 “But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.” Dr Mary Jane Woodger talked about this being less of a ranking order and more of an order of submissiveness or presiding (and there was a great discussion about presiding when it comes to husband and wife on Follow Him during the Doctrine and Covenants study). And not that the woman must be submissive to a man in a kowtow, subservient, no opinion, no spine kind of way, but in the way that Christ presides as the bridegroom and the church is submissive as the bride. She asks “Is Christ lessened by being submissive to our Father in Heaven?” She says “Every Latter-day Saint is voluntarily submissive through common consent with an understanding that the person who presides over them is going to serve them.” Having the head of a woman be the man can also be read as the woman is willing to let the man serve her. How often are we as women desparate to have someone offer us service, take some of the load, carry some of our burden? How often are we willing to let some of our burden go? Let someone take the load? Let someone do it? Are we willing to be submissive and let someone else serve us? Paul adds, (v11) “Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.” It’s extraordinary the circle it creates: we need to serve others, and we need to allow others to serve us. We can not be all the things for all the people. We need each other.