My Testimony of Women

People the world over search for meaning in their lives. They search for purpose, identity, and direction. When they don't find the true reason for our existence on earth, they choose, in the mean time, to fill their lives with other things instead. Many people find good causes to espouse and spend all their time trying to make the world better, after whatever pattern better might be to them. Many others turn inward and let selfishness take the wheel, hoping in vain that its blind eyes will take them somewhere that they want to be. Most of us, however, have a smattering of both selfless and selfish streaks strewn across the canvas of our lives, like a Jackson Pollock of human virtue and vice. And with each passing day we choose which color we prefer and we load our brush increasingly.

I feel inexpressibly blessed to have been given a true understanding of who I am, why I am here, and where I am going, through the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet even still, I find myself painting with colors that I desperately wish I could wipe from my palette forever. I can see how Jesus made his life a Master-piece, filled with perfect form and light, and my heart can hardly see how mine will ever become something worth hanging in the halls of heaven. But as I look back through my time before the easel at all the human influences that have both steadied my hand and put vision in my eyes, none have been greater than the women in my life.

As I have tried again and again to stencil in an image of Christ on my countenance (Alma 5:14), it has been the women in my life that have provided the closest pattern of pure love (Moroni 7:47) for me follow. Their kindness, slowness to judge, and willingness to sacrifice in my behalf makes me weep even now. Their belief in me, even when my canvas seemed everlastingly unsalvageable, brought hope surging back into my soul like the pure white gesso of Jesus. Any semblance of the Savior that has taken shaped on my soul has been tenderly and patiently nurtured by women.

I testify that women are angels in every sense of that word. I testify that their power and influence on this world and, more importantly, on the world to come is far greater than they know. I testify that someday all men across time will bow their heads in humble gratitude to God for gracing their lives with mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, grandmothers, aunts, and friends.

(To my wife, my daughter, my mom, my sister, my grammie, and many others)