When I was a teenager, Bishop Vaughn must have considered me to be a brewing Mormon feminist. In Bishop Youth Councils, I purposely spiced the calendaring discussions with protests over any discrepancies in budgets and adventure-meters between the young men and young women.
I endorsed the new Personal Progress program not only because it gave purpose to our midweek activities and incentives for personal growth, but because it also paralleled the Scouting program and provided a semblance of equality.
Within my family, I was disrespectful enough to suggest my sweet, angelic grandmother stop addressing her letters as Mrs. Parley Lloyd.
“You should write Ann Lloyd everywhere, all the time,” I remember saying.
But it was that same grandmother who mentored me through my second through 10th visits to the Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and taught me so much truth and eternal perspective, that ideas of sexism did not and have not distracted my thoughts when participating in temple ordinances.
I left the temple for the first time feeling extremely enlightened and surprisingly validated as a woman. My respect for Eve was amplified. I realized that eternal progression was truly an interdependent process.
Mission experiences soon confirmed those same realizations. I learned to live and work with a companion and compensate as well as appreciate each woman’s strengths and weaknesses. I learned about symbiotic relationships between missionaries and new converts, and how we needed each other to strengthen our faith. I learned to lose myself entirely to service to others — the days I set aside my own preferences and pretenses were the days I became an instrument in God’s hands rather than just a tool.
I’ll admit, I had gender-based challenges as a sister missionary and was guilty of not entirely respecting the roles of my district and zone leaders on occasion nor accepting the challenge of my mission president to teach myself Spanish so I could be transferred to more areas of the mission. My pride was like President Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s symbolic umbrella that kept me from receiving steady streams of heavenly blessings in favor of a few drops that I could see coming and catch with an extended palm.
Marriage in the temple was another reminder that we can’t receive every celestial blessing on our own. My new vulnerability was ultimately like closing the proverbial umbrella to receive a shower of heavenly blessings that sometimes even drenched and always sustained.
Temple ordinances taught me that my husband needed me, and I needed him, and we both needed the Savior to succeed. Those truths parallel to daily drudgeries as well. When we don’t work as a team and when we don’t turn to God for guidance, our finances are a mess, we are less-than-our best in our careers and our children exploit any semblance of a divide. The opposite has proven to be true — not any easier, but true, nonetheless.
My wise father grew up on a farm in southeastern Idaho where his father trained Clydesdale horses. His favorite parable for marriage is a team of horses that can’t move forward unless they are walking side-by-side and equally yoked. He also frequently counseled me, and many others, that marriage isn’t 50/50, but each must give a 100 percent in order to succeed.
Last Christmas, my dad commissioned a painting of his father holding the reins of his draft horses during a horse-pulling competition at the fairgrounds. Every time I walk past the print my parents gave each of their children, I remember to share the yoke. But I’m also reminded how the Savior holds the reins and gives us gentle reminders when we stray from a progressive path.
As a mother, wife, co-worker and in all my other roles in church and society, I have often been guilty of sprinting ahead in some decision, only to realize that I could have run further in the race if I’d taken a step back and traveled with a teammate. I don’t think I’m less of a woman if my teammate is a man, and I don’t feel weak when I limit my speed. Every humble decision — from starting a day in knee-bent prayer to asking for forgiveness or admitting I need help — requires humility that can’t co-exist with comparative attitudes.
So no, I don't label myself as a "Mormon feminist." And in Montana, we have women who wear pants to church most Sundays for myriad reasons. I’d rather emulate my grandmother Ann, who actually started addressing weekly letters to me on my mission with her name as well as Grandpa’s. She was confident in her eternal worth and recognized her dependence on Jesus Christ as her Savior and Redeemer. The temple was a place of peace and perspective for her and subsequently for me, where simple truths reach far beyond our current comprehension and social enigmas.
What I learned from her, I hope to pass along to my teenage daughters because they are going to need it. They are more independent-minded than I ever dreamed, and yet they have a grasp on gospel truths that keeps them grounded and faithful. I want their temple experience to be as enlightening and enriching as mine and not shrouded in self-doubt or concerns about sexism.
We all need each other to share the load required for personal progression in this life. And, fortunately, our eternal Savior lightens the seemingly burdensome yoke and gives us the guidance we need when we need it.
Hopefully, we’re receptive enough to hear and feel and act in unison.
Stacie Lloyd Duce is a columnist and magazine editor featured regularly in several Montana and Utah publications. Her columns appear regularly on deseretnews.com. Email: duceswild7@gmail.com