"Young" Women Values and Women

I received my young women medallion three times. I wish I could say it was because I just loved the young women program, but while that was true . . . the real reason I got it so many times was because I was on a mission to prove I was as good as the boys. I was furious when I found out I couldn't be a boy scout and I was so frustrated with all the boys who didn't take it seriously and didn't do any of their own work. I knew that I could be a great Eagle Scout and I wanted to show the boys how it should be done. I even checked out the manuals for the badges from the library once and tried to give myself the badges at home, but it turns out that doesn't work. So one day someone told me that receiving the Young Womanhood medallion was the equivalent to the Eagle Scout for girls. So I buckled down and I did it over and over again. And you know what, I did learn a lot and I grew a lot. But somehow with all those attempts I never caught the vision of the program. Maybe if I had, I would have had a better start on answering these questions.

So someday, I'm going to do this program again for the fourth time and this time it won't be about the medal. This time it will actually be about learning what it means to be a woman and developing my divine characteristics. The purpose of this program is to help young women develop the divine characteristics of women so they are prepared to use them in Relief Society. So let me do a quick walk-through of the values to be developed.

Faith: For me, faith seems to encompass the ability to do the things we learn about in church everyday. Habitual scriptures study and prayers, living gospel principles, fulfilling covenants, and understanding Heavenly Father's plan for us. I think it's important to recognize that faith is the first value because it takes faith to even start this program with the right purpose. This is an important characteristic of women. As my religion teacher pointed out, women consistently are more faithful in attending their church meetings. I think this has to do with an innate faith in God's plan for them. One important thing this value teaches is what exactly faith is. Almost all of these values are associated with doing something basic in the gospel. And that's important. Faith is not some intangible concept. When you have faith, you do what you know God wants you to and you move forward. 

Divine Nature: This is an interesting value in relation to this post. You could say I'm on a good start to developing my divine nature with this post on divine attributes. Divine nature basically helps women realize that they are striving to be like God and there is always some attribute of our character to work on. I like to think of it as working on becoming like a queen. Along these characteristics in this post, there are other godly characteristics that we should work to develop including obedience, temperance, patience, kindness, and charity. (And I'm under the impression that the purpose of Relief Society is in part to help us develop charity.) Divine nature is a characteristic of women because ever person on this earth is a daughter/son of God and as such has the ability to become like God in character. 

Individual Worth: It's kind of hard to imagine that with how many children God has that he cares about me individual. This value shows that I am unique from everybody else on this planet. I have unique abilities and struggles and Heavenly Father knows that. He has an individual plan and purpose for just me even if I don't remember it right now. This attribute also helps women realize that the above is true for all the other women around them. It helps us learn to appreciate the individual worth of everyone around us. It also helps us recognize our unique talents so we can be prepared to share them with others in Relief Society.

Knowledge: This may not be a characteristic everyone is born with, but this is one of the few divine characteristics of women that I know I had when I got here. This attribute is the desire to learn about everything. It's the desire to understand how things work both spiritually and temporally. It's the desire to learn knew skills and to progress in this life. For me this is truly a characteristic of my personality. But just like some of the other characteristics for me, if we lack this characteristic now, the desire to learn things can and should be cultivated until it becomes a part of our personalities.

Choice and Accountability: This attribute helps us learn that we make our own choices and have to accept the consequences of them. This is still a concept we need to develop as we grow up. One of the common misconceptions that about this that persists after young women's is the idea that other people can change our emotions. Emotions are choices too . . . wow that's just something I don't have down yet. 

Good Works: I think this is one of the main attributes utilized in the Relief Society and thus one of the most important to develop as a young woman. This is the desire to help others. This truly is a divine attribute of women . . . since it just seems to be an innate desire for us to help others. We want to make other people happy and we want to step in when some one is struggling.

Integrity: This is not only the ability to live what you know, but it's also the ability to have your words and your deeds in line with each other. When we develop integrity we don't feel like different personalities around different people, people know that if we say we'll do something we will (something I struggle with simply because I forget), and that we don't live differently than what we know in our head. 

Virtue: And last of all virtue is simply the ability to keep ourselves completely chaste for our future (or current) husbands. This value teaches the importance of it. I think I'll have a later post on something I found about this. I wish this value would teach us as women how important this is. I'll show you what I mean later.

As a closing word on this, I wish I had really read the First Presidency Message for Personal Progress a long time ago. Listen to this, "You are a beloved daughter of Heavenly Father, prepared to come to the earth at this particular time for a sacred and glorious purpose. You have a noble responsibility to use your strength and influence for good. Your loving Heavenly Father has blessed you with talents and abilities that will help you fulfill your divine mission. As you learn to accept and act upon the Young Women values in your life, you will form personal habits of prayer, scripture study, obedience to the commandments, and service to others. These daily personal habits will strengthen your faith in and testimony of Jesus Christ. They will also allow you to recognize and develop your unique gifts. Always use your influence to lift and bless your family, other young women, and the young men with whom you associate. Honor womanhood, support the priesthood, and cherish faithful motherhood and fatherhood. . . . Counsel with your parents, and prayerfully choose goals that will help you cultivate feminine attributes, strengthen your testimony, and reach your divine potential."