Where is Mother?
The time I first really thought about Heavenly Mother
I don't remember exactly what was happening the day I first thought about Mother.
I do remember I was washing the dishes. Looking out the window into our backyard.
That backyard was beautiful. It was spacious, with lush green grass and a huge, beautiful apple tree. The tree would blossom in the spring, and be covered in green leaves and apples in the summer. Those leaves would turn and fall in the autumn — covering our lawn, and in the winter, each branch would be layered in snow.
We had two kids while we lived in that house. They ran around barefoot on that lawn, climbed the tree, and swung in the tire swing hanging from it. They'd eat apples from the tree constantly and I'd wonder at the fact that they could just go outside and pick up an apple to eat while playing.
That tree was mystical and that backyard was pure magic.
I was washing dishes. I think it must have been a lot of dishes because I remember feeling frustrated and a little discontent at that moment. I think my husband was at a church meeting. And somewhere in the middle of my jumble of thoughts, I thought something along the lines of, "WHERE IS MOTHER?"
Heavenly Mother, that is.
I was in my mid-twenties, and I had been an active member of the LDS church (Mormon church, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) my entire life. It wasn't a church I just went to on Sundays, but something I was very spiritually involved in on a personal level as well.
As a teenager, I developed a strong testimony, or belief in the church and in God. My mom, who converted to the church when she was a teenager, would often quote Proverbs 3:5-6 with me before bed every night. "Trust in the Lord thy God with all your heart, lean not into your own understandings. In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths."
I trusted God. I trusted God when my parents divorced and when there were back-to-back-to-back deaths in my extended family. I trusted God when my heart was broken and when I felt prompted to go to a specific college. I trusted God when I dated my husband, chose a major and profession, and when I felt strongly that I should start a family young.
God as I knew Him, was Heavenly Father. The Mormon/LDS God is recognized as Jesus and Heavenly Father (2 separate beings, one in purpose). In my experience, "Heavenly Father" is the most common name used when talking about God.
I had plenty of spiritual experiences growing up that I perceived as love from God, as God's hand in my life. And that God I was accustomed to, was Heavenly Father.
Back to my sink full of dishes and the full-blown realization that Mother God was MISSING.
Why would a Mother God be missing?
As I ruminated over this I slowly felt impressed that she was there. Not missing, entirely.
But what was she doing? Was she like, at home doing the dishes or something? If God was so involved in our lives, why was it only Heavenly Father? Why wasn't Heavenly Mother involved as well?
This was an extremely frustrating and confusing realization. But it was something else, too.
It was the very beginning of feeling Her.
See, it wasn’t that she wasn’t there. It’s that she wasn’t recognized.
This experience was the beginning of a couple of things:
1- The beginning of feeling a higher connection to God and to feeling that divinity in myself. Because I (a woman!) was made in the image of God.
2- The beginning of a faith deconstruction/crisis/transition — whatever you want to call it. This experience brought to my attention that there were things that the institutionalized church was missing.
This moment is when something clicked for me. I realized that if there’s a Father in Heaven, there must also be a Mother in Heaven.
A Mother God. And as a God, she would be submissive and beneath no one.
I don’t know if it’s possible to fully embrace the belief that you have 2 equal parents in heaven without following the logic that in their likeness, men and women are equal in glory and potential. And not see how that is so far from how we live and practice.
Sometimes I wish I could go back, it was so much simpler then. But now I am getting to know my mother, and realizing my own true worth and potential.
