Sarah: Women’s Studies: Finding Women’s Value

Sarah’s questions about women’s roles that were raised in graduate school taught her how spiritually enriching and multifaceted her role as a faithful woman could be. She shares how her education enhanced her appreciation of unique Restoration doctrines about women and motherhood.

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Faith Is Not Blind: Welcome to the Faith Is Not Blind Podcast. This is Eric d’Evegnee and today we have Sarah with us. She normally does the interviews for us, but we thought today that we would interview her. And–full disclosure–she’s my wife. So this is a fun chance for us to be able to talk about some of the things we’ve been discussing on the podcast. So welcome, Sarah.

 

Sarah: Thank you. It’s really good to be here on the other end. 

 

Faith Is Not Blind: So tell us a little bit about your background.

 

Sarah: I grew up in a family that I think in a lot of ways was sort of I like–I like to think of it as  “the classroom experiment.” My parents met in a classroom where they were taking a class called “Your Religious Problems” at BYU where they openly discussed questions about the gospel and pursued ideas. So this classroom was sort of transformed into my home environment. Being raised in my home, we did all the normal things like scripture reading and Family Home Evening, but my parents very deliberately asked us questions about how we felt about things. I never felt like the gospel either had to be true or not true. I felt like it was very safe to ask questions and to respond to questions. And in that way, I think it was nice to sort of see it from my own experience. It was non-binary thinking home. It was very safe and very open. And not that it was all just cerebral and that we were all just discussing questions all the time. It was also a place that was full of love. And I think the love was made manifest in the open-mindedness. It was sort of braided together with the questions and the love and the safeness.

 

Faith Is Not Blind: Almost like the love allowed for the questioning to happen–that things were open because everything felt safe and secure. 

 

Sarah: Yes. One thing that was really fun about my childhood is that my mom was the Primary Chorister when I was 11. So in the private sphere of our home, there was the safety, but then at Church, here was the same person who had asked me questions and had wanted me really to fully express myself even if I wasn’t sure. And she was leading the songs in Primary. And I specifically remember when I was 11 and she was the chorister, and the kids in my class were the tallest ones in Primary. We were about to go into Young Men’s and Young Women’s and we towered over everyone. Some of the other kids didn’t like to sing the songs. They were sort of above all that. But, maybe partly because my mom was the chorister, I loved singing those songs and I felt my mom’s love of the music and of the songs. But it wasn’t just that, it was the lyrics. One of the first times that I remember feeling the Spirit and knowing that it was the Spirit was when we were singing a specific song in Primary, which was a song about love. It was “Where love is, there God is also. Where love is, I want to be.” And my mom was up there on her tippy-toes just leading with her hands with all the energy of heart and I felt it. And I knew I wanted that love and that kind of experience for the rest of my life.

Faith Is Not Blind: Wow. So that’s a real kind of unity between the home and the Church. They sort of bleed into each other. Or a better metaphor would be that they were interwoven–that what you’re being taught at home fits in with what you see happening at Church. And that person that you see at home, you see her at Church and doing the same thing and that helps to really strengthen your testimony.  So I know you were born and raised in Utah and you spent some time in Idaho always around lots of other members and you have that experience you just described. What other experiences have led to your personal testimony of the Gospel?

 

Sarah: It’s interesting to think about it because we ask people these questions for the Podcast and so you think to yourself, “Well, how would I answer that question?”  And it really does come down to the public sphere vs. private sphere. Because in the private sphere I felt like I had a testimony. I felt like I knew God. My testimony was simultaneously sort of stretched and grown when I realized I wanted to be a mom like my mom and I wanted to teach my children and then I had this revelatory experience where I felt like I should serve a mission. At that time, there weren’t a lot of sister missionaries going on a mission, so what happened was I would tell people I wanted to serve a mission, and it was this very private thing that I was sharing. And what they would say was, “Well, you don’t have to go on a mission. You can just stay home and get married. No one would require that of you.” And I was a little surprised because in my home it was perfectly acceptable, but what I found in the larger Church culture was that me wanting to share the love of the Savior as a missionary might not be as acceptable. So it was the first time where I saw–you know we always talk about “the gap” in Faith Is Not Blind. There was a gap between how I perceived that I could live my testimony and the expectations of other people. 

 

Faith Is Not Blind: It’s interesting the way you described that question. I mean, it almost sounds like the assumption of the question is that motherhood and serving a mission are mutually exclusive. It’s not explicit and it may not be completely intentional, but it almost sounds that way. So instead of saying, “Wow. That’s really great that you want to serve a mission,” the responses were, “You may not have to,” which which is a really interesting way to respond. So your testimony sort of rubbed up against the sort of culture where you thought “I’m not quite sure I understand why that decision is different in public than how it is in my home.” How did you work your way through that particular question?

 

Sarah: I think a lot of it was that I was an English major and loved reading and loved stories. What helped me the most was finding the story of Abish in the Book of Mormon. This was partly because Abish is a woman. I love that she’s one person. She was a Lamanite and a woman and she was a servant. So in that culture, she had three strikes against her. But looking at her story, I noticed how and she was a missionary.  Before my mission, I hadn’t even seen her really or I guess recognized her enough to be conscious of her story. So on my mission in my missionary scriptures I circled her name and wrote “This is a sister missionary!”  And I thought, “How can I follow her example?” And what I realized in her story was that she reached out to people in private–she went from house to house. But then she also found value in the court and that helped me see–like you were saying earlier–it didn’t have to be mutually exclusive. I could have value in the private sphere in homes–in my own home hopefully one day, but that I could also, like Abish, have a lot of value and have a voice in public and make a difference. And I wanted to be able to do that. So when I got back from my mission I prayed about it and the way that I recognized the Spirit was that it felt like love. Now, it’s not always comfortable, but I wanted to feel that feeling of love. And then I felt like I should go to graduate school, which surprised me.

 

Faith Is Not Blind: Because it took you one step further, right? You’re back home and then graduate school almost feels like another step away from the home–if you think of it as a binary.

 

Sarah: Of course I wanted to get married. I wanted to be a mother more than anything else and going to graduate school–even though it would seem like it would take me away from that–I can say that it showed me how not only to be a better teacher, but to be better in the home once I finally was able to have kids. But that tension was really difficult because in graduate school I felt like I should study women’s stories. And up to that point, that was one of the most painful things for me to do in terms of my relationship with God because I realized how painful women’s stories had been in the past. I remember leaving a class where we were learning about some of the painful things that happened to women throughout history and I went home and I dropped to my knees and prayed about it. And God tutored me through it, which was so interesting because it seems like when we have these moments where our faith feels like it’s in crisis a sacrifice has to be made of some kind. And God sort of reached out to me He said, “Don’t sacrifice your faith. Sacrifice the pain. Let me teach you, Let me teach you a little bit better,” And again that was surprising because I was learning about my role as a woman in a very private intimate moment with Him as my Father.

 

Faith Is Not Blind: If I can back up just a second, you talked about how the tension was really difficult in graduate school. What did that feel like for you? Because it connects with what you’re learning, right?  As you’re on your knees praying about these stories, about understanding the roles of women, what was that tension like for you?

 

Sarah: The tension was a constructive tension in that it helped me see that where I was didn’t necessarily have to be where I was going to stay. There needed to be some movement. And that the movement didn’t have to be away from God. It could be towards understanding. And that that understanding was going to come through education and through study and through studying women’s stories even more. Through writing my Master’s Thesis about women’s stories and about looking for women stories, I started to understand how I could take that tension and instead of becoming bitter because of it, I could help other women value their stories. I could teach other women how God valued their stories. 

 

Faith Is Not Blind: Yeah. I really love that because it ties back to Abish I think in a lot of ways.  Like you said, her ability to help people from home to home but then also work in the court.  I mean, think about how central she is in that part of the Book of Mormon. Because, you know, it’s interesting. Everybody is passed out because they’re unconscious except for her. Because she had been taught by her father, she’s able to recognize what the situation is and go from home to home. So it’s that lesson again about how important women’s stories are, which is hard because they’re not always front and center. Often we think of Nephi and Lehi’s family where we know there were women included but they’re not really talked aside from Sariah. So what did you gain from that graduate school experience and information? How do you feel like those things helped you in your future as a mother or as a teacher at the University?

 

Sarah: I like that you said that Abish was the only one who was conscious, she was the only one that was aware. I think being aware and being conscious is a big part of it. I feel like if I’m aware of history, if I’m aware of women’s stories, if I’m aware of my story–that’s going to help me wake everybody up to the importance of these female stories, these female experiences. And ironically me being aware of those public stories and Abish’s influence in the public sphere

has helped me in callings with other women, certainly in Relief Society callings and in Young Women’s callings–to be able to help them see that they don’t have to be in the limelight to have value and that their value is unconditional, but that their voice does need to be consciously developed. They need to find ways to share their story, even if they feel uncomfortable. Or if they perceive that they’re less valuable, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s true. But I learned that I could ask them to share their stories and show them that they are certainly valuable beyond their bodies or beyond beauty. And graduate school taught me that. 

 

And then even as a mother. What was so interesting about that, too, is feeling like I wanted to be a mother and I wanted to have as many children as God wanted me to. I think being a missionary and being in graduate school and doing those things in the public sphere helped me feel so valuable that I knew I could sacrifice to have children. It’s that primary song again: “Where love is, I want to be.” And I wanted to have children who hopefully would be raised in a home like that, where love was. But what I found when we were first able to get pregnant was that pregnancy was so difficult. I was much sicker than I thought I would be. I felt useless. I remember lying on the couch and we were in our little newlywed apartment. People would walk by the window and I would think, “How is the world populated?” There were people walking around and every one of them had a mother who felt like this. And I thought, “How in the world does the world keep going? How was it populated?” And in that moment what I learned was that the strength that I had gained through being educated and through finding my value helped me in that very most private of private spheres–with a pregnancy–where no one could help me through it. I was all alone. And again, it was almost like that moment when I had been praying about women’s issues except this time I  was praying about my issue as a woman. And what happened was, because I had the courage and because I had learned that God would reach out to me when I wanted to do the things that He asked me to, in that very private moment, He taught me that the Atonement could help me get through a pregnancy. 

 

We have seven kids. . . as you know.

 

Faith Is Not Blind: I’ve noticed.

 

Sarah: With each one of them, I just felt like this: with your faith, you’re approaching an altar and you need to put something on it. So you could put your faith on it and sacrifice your faith. Or you put yourself on it.  And, for me, I learned that the Savior would help me and be so close to me like that it was a private sphere–the private sphere of the Atonement. And that He would strengthen me every day when I got up and I thought that I could not make it through one more day of sickness. It became sort of like this privilege to be in a private sphere with Him.

 

I also want something here. I think it’s interesting that you asked me how what I learned in graduate school would apply to some of the things that were talking about with women’s issues.  I noticed how studying about women and their stories in graduate school helped me appreciate the sublime beauty of the Restoration and what it offers us in terms of a unique perspective about women. I think of the restored doctrine of Eve. We named one of our daughters Eve because of this new understanding about Eve. We know about the Fall being a blessing. We know that Eve was a hero in that story and that she was able to experience joy because of the Fall. And I don’t think I fully appreciated that before I had had some of the tension, before I had had some of the questions about my role as a woman and my value as a woman. It’s aesthetically astounding to realize that our Church is the only one that believes that about Eve. We believe in a Heavenly Mother. We believe women that women have authority with their husbands and they are able to appreciate and be blessed by the priesthood fully. And that perspective really helps to ground me and to understand how beautiful the restoration is in terms of what it does for women.

 

Faith Is Not Blind: I love listening to that story. The arc of your story as you just told it is that idea that anything good that we earn, any blessing that we have, we don’t have to lose. The things that we gain through experience and through drawing closer to God can stay with us. Whether it’s graduate school or a mission or motherhood, all those things can combine together. In your story originally–maybe when you were a teenager–it felt like a fork in the road, but it’s not really a fork. But it makes me think of that scripture from Romans: “All things work together for the good of them who love God” regardless of your path . And your path kind of weaves in an interesting way through both the private and the public sphere. But all of it together–much like Abish’s story–brings you closer to God. My final question would be, what advice would you give to younger women who are facing some of those decisions about missions and about marriage and maybe even graduate school? Those decisions that they have are really significant decisions, especially for women in that private public sphere? I would imagine that it could feel like you’ve got to go one way or the other. What would you say to women that are younger than you or what would you even say to your younger version of your younger self? 

 

Sarah: Well, that’s an interesting question because I don’t know that I’m qualified to give advice to women. But I can just speak as myself. I just keep thinking of Alma 32. Ironically, I was listening to it as I was stirring something on the stove. I realized that we talk so much about “planting the seed,” but the people who heard that story had been cast out of the synagogue, cast out of the public sphere. And I know as a woman sometimes it’s easy to feel that way, like you’re cast out of the synagogue. Alma stops preaching to everybody else and focuses on them. And what he says was “even if only have a desire to believe, plant the seed.” And what I noticed when I was listening to it that I hadn’t noticed before was that he’s not necessarily talking about only planting one seed. He’s talking about planting a multiplicity of seeds. It’s a lot of seeds. And some of them will grow up to be trees. And I was imagining it as this tree with all these other trees around it. The most central figure, the most central symbol, is the Tree of Life, which is the Atonement. But there are all of these other trees too. And so I feel like I can plant all the trees that God would ask me to, but that I just need to make sure that it is the fruit of the Tree of Life that I am most centered on. Not that every woman needs to do everything in the public and private sphere. I just think it is private. It is so personal. But when I have centered myself and my testimony on the fruit of the Tree of Life, then all of these other trees get to grow. And I get to become everything–well, beyond everything–that I hoped that I would be. And I think I feel really blessed and lucky to have a whole garden full of trees.

 

Faith Is Not Blind: That’s wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing that. Thanks for being here. I hope you enjoy being in the other chair.

 

Sarah: I don’t know if enjoyment is the right word, but it was fun talking to you.