I am a lifelong member who was born into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to “pioneer stock” parents and grew up in Utah. I served a full-time mission in which I learned to know and love God and to embrace different ideas and peoples. My relationship with my Heavenly Father is not a problem, he knows what is in my heart. But the rigidness of gender roles makes me feel uncomfortable and unwanted at church.
I am a working professional Financial Controller and a wife and mother. I have learned three languages and worked on two continents in four countries. I am tired of being vilified as the archetype women should never be: a co-equal with a man. It is difficult to work alongside men during the week being viewed as a peer and then to go to church once a week and having to assume a more submissive role. I was blessed by our Heavenly Father with intelligence and ambition, which in a man would be advantageous blessings, but as a woman can only be seen as misguided or scary.
Having a successful career, marriage, and family life involves a delicate balancing act. For myself I don’t know that I even wanted to receive the priesthood. What I want are good, honest women priesthood leaders that I can talk to and, most importantly, not receive condemnation for my choice to be a working wife and mother. I want women to be ordained.