Hi, my name is Brianne.
Right now, as I write this, it is 2:40AM. I am sitting on the couch at my mother’s house, reflecting on the experiences I have had in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and what the Church has meant to me in my life.
I was born and raised LDS, though my upbringing was not traditional. My mother, even through devoutly Mormon, was a feminist, and my father was not Mormon at all–in fact he wasn’t even religious. My father also had a very demanding blue-collar job that took him away most months out of the year. So my only active day in and day out role model was my feminist Mormon mother.
The Church for me has been a mixture of love and pain. And I dare say more pain then love. However, I love the church but I withdrew myself many years ago. I did so over womens inequality within the church, and over the hate I had received from faithful members of the Church over the views I held and still hold. Those times in my life were most painful.
Although I still love and cherish these people for the wonderful roles they played in my life, most of these people don’t know how devoutly Mormon I am, even to this day. Though my views are not exactly the same as theirs, the intention of coming together in community, worshiping, loving, honoring, and serving Jesus Christ and our in Farther in Heaven is the same.
My mother who has been a source of strength and power for me taught me that I was never less than a man in any situation; that the power I hold as a child of God was and is equal to theirs; that my life as a woman meant and means more then just being a wife and mother.
My mother taught me to be bold and follow her example. As there were many times as a child when I was sick and there were no priesthood holders in my home ,at the time she would lay her hands on my head and give me a blessing. She prayed with beautiful strong faith with the deep conviction that our Heavenly Father was not waiting for a man to come to the rescue but for her to claim the power that had been denied her. And Heavenly Father worked through her, not caring that she was a female.
I know with every fiber of my being that every Mormon woman is just as incredible as my Mormon feminist mother. We women are divinely powerful and it is time the glass ceiling to our spiritual potential be shattered.
I believe that in order for us as women to fully understand and feel the depth of our divinity, we must be able to utilize our natural ability to lead, influence and nurture on a more active and higher paying field then just our homes: which means women’s ordination into the holy priesthood.
Women’s ordination does not mean we wish go take over and kick men out. It means we wish to live up to our divine potential as Daughters of a Heavenly Mother and Father who created us in beauty and majesty, just as they did their sons.
Women’s ordiation will be the visible sign that the Church sees us in our full divinity, as a child of God, growing into exaltation. We are capable and inherently divine.
I am so very hopeful that we as women, not just in the Mormon faith, but all of our faithful sisters will bask in the joy and excitement of women’s ordiation.
In the words of Martin Luther King Jr: “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
I fully and whole heartedly support the ordination of women into the priesthood. Not just in the Mormon faith, but in ALL faiths.