Monday, May 4, 2009

Motivational Monday - "To Young Women" Jeffrey R. Holland

Edited from Jeffrey R. Holland, “To Young Women,” Ensign, Nov 2005, 28

I want you to be proud you are a woman.

I want you to feel the reality of what that means, to know who you truly are.

You are literally a spirit daughter of heavenly parents with a divine nature and an eternal destiny.

That surpassing truth should be fixed deep in your soul and be fundamental to every decision you make as you grow into mature womanhood.

Your Father in Heaven knows your name and knows your circumstance.

He hears your prayers.

He knows your hopes and dreams, including your fears and frustrations.

And He knows what you can become through faith in Him.

Be a woman of Christ. Cherish your esteemed place in the sight of God.

He needs you..... This Church needs you..... The world needs you..... A woman’s abiding trust in God and unfailing devotion to things of the Spirit have always been an anchor when the wind and the waves of life were fiercest.

I say to you what the Prophet Joseph said more than 150 years ago: “If you live up to your privileges, the angels cannot be restrained from being your associates.”
All of this is to try to tell you how your Father in Heaven feels about you and what He has designed for you to become.

And if for a time any of you are less visionary than this or seem bent on living beneath your privilege, then we express even greater love for you and plead with you to make your years a triumph, not a tragedy.

For you to fully claim Heavenly Father’s blessings and protection, we ask you to stay true to the standards of the gospel of Jesus Christ and not slavishly follow the whims of fads and fashions.

The For the Strength of Youth pamphlet is very clear in its call for young women to avoid clothing that is too tight, too short, or improperly revealing in any manner, including bare midriffs. Choose your clothing the way you would choose your friends—in both cases choose that which improves you and would give you confidence standing in the presence of God.

Good friends would never embarrass you, demean you, or exploit you. Neither should your clothing. I make a special appeal regarding how women might dress for Church services and Sabbath worship. We used to speak of “best dress” or “Sunday dress,” and maybe we should do so again. In any case, from ancient times to modern we have always been invited to present our best selves inside and out when entering the house of the Lord—and a dedicated LDS chapel is a “house of the Lord.”

Our clothing or footwear need never be expensive, indeed should not be expensive, but neither should it appear that we are on our way to the beach.

When we come to worship the God and Father of us all and to partake of the sacrament symbolizing the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we should be as comely and respectful, as dignified and appropriate as we can be.

We should be recognizable in appearance as well as in behavior that we truly are disciples of Christ, that in a spirit of worship we are meek and lowly of heart, that we truly desire the Savior’s Spirit to be with us always.

In this same vein may I address an even more sensitive subject. I plead with you to please be more accepting of yourselves, including your body shape and style, with a little less longing to look like someone else.

We are all different.

Some are tall, and some are short. Some are round, and some are thin.

And almost everyone at some time or other wants to be something they are not!

But as said: “You can’t live your life worrying that the world is staring at you. When you let people’s opinions make you self-conscious you give away your power. …


The key to feeling [confident] is to always listen to your inner self—[the real you.” And in the kingdom of God, the real you is “more precious than rubies.”

Every young woman is a child of destiny and every adult woman a powerful force for good. I mention adult women because, sisters, you are our greatest examples and resource for these young women.

And if you are obsessing over being a size 2, you won’t be very surprised when your daughter does the same and makes herself physically ill trying to accomplish it.

We should all be as fit as we can be—that’s good Word of Wisdom doctrine.

That means eating right and exercising and helping our bodies function at their optimum strength.

We could probably all do better in that regard.

But I speak here of optimum health; there is no universal optimum size.

Frankly, the world has been brutal with you in this regard. You are bombarded in movies, television, fashion magazines, and advertisements with the message that looks are everything!

The pitch is, “If your looks are good enough, your life will be glamorous and you will be happy and popular.” That kind of pressure is immense in the teenage years, to say nothing of later womanhood. In too many cases too much is being done to the human body to meet just such a fictional (to say nothing of superficial) standard.

As one Hollywood actress is reported to have said recently: “We’ve become obsessed with beauty and the fountain of youth. … I’m really saddened by the way women mutilate [themselves] in search of that. I see women [including young women] … pulling this up and tucking that back. It’s like a slippery slope. [You can’t get off of it.] … It’s really insane … what society is doing to women.”

In terms of preoccupation with self and a fixation on the physical, this is more than social insanity; it is spiritually destructive, and it accounts for much of the unhappiness women, including young women, face in the modern world.

And if adults are preoccupied with appearance—tucking and nipping and implanting and remodeling everything that can be remodeled—those pressures and anxieties will certainly seep through to children. At some point the problem becomes what the Book of Mormon called “vain imaginations.”

And in secular society both vanity and imagination run wild. One would truly need a great and spacious makeup kit to compete with beauty as portrayed in media all around us.
Yet at the end of the day there would still be those “in the attitude of mocking and pointing their fingers” as Lehi saw, because however much one tries in the world of glamour and fashion, it will never be glamorous enough.

A woman not of our faith once wrote something to the effect that in her years of working with beautiful women she had seen several things they all had in common, and not one of them had anything to do with sizes and shapes.

She said the loveliest women she had known had a glow of health, a warm personality, a love of learning, stability of character, and integrity.

If we may add the sweet and gentle Spirit of the Lord carried by such a woman, then this describes the loveliness of women in any age or time, every element of which is emphasized in and attainable through the blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
To every other young person in this Church I bear my personal witness that God is in reality our Father and Jesus Christ is in reality His Only Begotten Son in the flesh, the Savior and Redeemer of the world.

I testify that this really is the Church and kingdom of God on earth, that true prophets have led this people in the past and a true prophet, President Thomas S. Monson, leads it now.

May you know the unending love the leaders of the Church have for you and may you let the eternal realities of the gospel of Jesus Christ lift you above temporal concerns and anxieties I pray, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

5 comments:

Ann Marie said...

Great thoughts to start off my Monday! I appreciate the talk, and I love Elder Holland!

Small House said...

Don't you just love Elder Holland? I love anything for the YW. YW is truly my FAVORITE place to be!

Thanks for the lift. Especially since I'm at work peaking at your blog. You need happy things at work.
Sandra

CB said...

What happy thoughts! It is so great to be a woman. Elder Holland is always so wonderful.

I also love the create video at the top. It is so GOOD!

Kimmie said...

I loved this as well!! It is SO comforting to have such happy, positive talks given to us by our leaders. They inspire me so much!

Thanks for posting this...it was a wonderful read to start my week and President Uchtdorf's Create, makes me feel like I can do anything!

Thanks for the positive, sweet joy you bring to the blog world. I'm so glad to get to know you better as I read through your past posts I am realizing what an amazing, wonderful woman you are with SO much to teach us all of us!!

Have a wonderful day!

Connie said...

Great talk by Elder Holland. Thanks for posting this today. I needed it.

I also LOVE the talk Pres. Uchtdorf gave on creativity and I love the video of it.

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