No one can deny the power of a good book. Every once in a while some of us are lucky enough to come across a book that changes the way we see the world and what we want from the one life we’ve been given on this crazy planet. I became one of the lucky ones when, as an eleven-year-old girl, I came across just such a book.
“The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle” (Avi 1990) is the story of the daughter of an upper-class American family. The book begins in 1832 when, after studying at a private girl’s school in England, Charlotte is about to board the Seahawk and make the long voyage back to America. Despite warnings from the ship’s crew that have scared away the other passengers, Charlotte’s escort insists that she board the ship and, so, the obedient, proper young lady ends up as the only passenger (and the only female) aboard the ship. She eventually learns why the crew did not want any passengers on the voyage as she discovers their plans for mutiny. The story follows Charlotte on her adventurous journey across the ocean as her cultured world is torn apart by the realities of the world outside her sheltered, sophisticated upbringing.
I read and reread that book time and again. Every time I would follow Charlotte through her journey as she insisted in the beginning to maintain her cultured dignity in the face of so many dirty, vile, mutinous sailors. Then I would struggle with her as time, experience, and confrontation with stark reality began to change her view of the sailors she had once loathed and the captain she had previously clung to as her only connection to her cultured world. And then I would feel her exhilarating new freedom as she left behind her pretty dresses and sophisticated (yet naive) notions and joined the mutinous sailors and became one herself. And I would always end the book with a burning desire to “be a pirate” too and live a life of true adventure.
Over time, “The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle” changed the way I saw the world in two ways. First, it cemented in me a desire to pursue the unconventional and adventurous. Second, it gave me a healthy desire to question . . . everything! It made me look at my life, my culture, my religious beliefs, and my hopes and dreams for the future with a new, more critical perspective. I was determined to do as Charlotte did and see the world and myself with open eyes. I wanted to know people for who they really were, not just the image the world expected me to believe. I wanted to gain the kind of knowledge that would allow me to have my own educated political beliefs. I wanted to know how much of what I wanted out of life was simply a result of my environment and culture; and I wanted to make sure that in the end my hopes and dreams were based on decisions I made for myself because I knew why they were important. More than anything, I wanted to know if the beliefs I held closest to me were based on true doctrine, or if they were simply a product of my culture. In essence, I wanted to understand and make my life and beliefs my own.
After my third or fourth reading of the book I was at the interesting age of 13 when boys were suddenly something other than those annoying kids on the playground I sometimes had to beat up. By thirteen I’d experienced my own crush or two, but my little Charlotte heart had also recognized that middle-school love was a very superficial business (especially since I had recently faked a crush just to have something to talk about with my friends). Now, with a fresh dose of “pirate perspective” from my most recent reading of the book, I was determined to conquer the superficiality of middle-school love and discover the world beyond teenage dreams of Prince Charming and magical prom nights.
One of the first things I locked onto in my inquiry of the culture of love was what seemed (to me, at the time) to be the typical life trajectory of the average Utah female: grow up, get married, have babies. To a thirteen-year-old girl bound and determined to live an unconventional and adventurous life, this seemed to be the antithesis and the great adversary to all my dreams of adventure. And so it was that at 13-years-old I came to the conclusion that I did NOT want to just grow up, get married, and have babies. I can still remember the moment I chose to confess my feelings on the matter to my mother. We were in the car—in-between stores as we ran errands on a Saturday—and I decided that was the best time to bring up the fact that I wanted to be a “pirate” and live a life of adventure . . . and I simply couldn’t see how marriage and babies would ever allow me to achieve that. I wanted the world to expect more from me than a pretty face, good cooking skills, and a perfectly organized home full of children and a successful husband. It seemed to be a hollow cultural expectation and I didn’t fancy the idea of doing something so unadventurous simply due to cultural motives. I wanted to be a “pirate” and to explore the world and all my potential.
After hearing me out my mother did something I will never forget—she didn’t say I was being silly or that my view of motherhood was a bit immature; she didn’t even tell me that I could live a little before I settled down—no, my mother simply shared her testimony with me. She did so by painting a beautiful picture of the life she had lived, including her adventures of swimming in the Red Sea, touring the Great Pyramids of Egypt, and walking down the streets of Italy. All these activities, she pointed out, she had done once she was already a mother. Motherhood, in other words, would not equal an end to all my adventure. In fact, even in comparison with these adventures, motherhood had been and forever would be her greatest adventure. I cannot put into words exactly how she said it all, but the power and commitment with which she humbly testified of motherhood spoke to my soul in such a way that I have never been able to forget that moment, nor her message.
My mother’s testimony made a subtle, but very important, change to the way I approached my motherhood investigation. I was still very much an adventure-bound teenager with a determined desire to do more, see more, and change more in the world than what I judged (and forgive me for my adolescent prejudices) to be the aspirations of the average boy-crazy, motherhood-anticipating female. However, now I had not only heard my mother’s powerful testimony of the importance of motherhood, but I had also felt the truthfulness of it and I could not deny it. Plus, her claim that motherhood was an adventure had piqued my interest. So, despite my continued desire to exceed the perceived cultural expectation for me to marry and produce as if it were my only purpose in life, my mother’s testimony made me stop and ask myself if and why motherhood was so important. I was reminded that Charlotte Doyle had been able to achieve an adventurous life, not because she initially sought adventure, but because she had sought the truth. Truth gave her adventure, and suddenly I wanted the full truth about what it meant to be a woman and a mother.
I already knew what the world thought about the two topics (and, to be honest, I found the world’s objectification of women even more unappealing than the cultural belief that a woman’s only purpose in life was to reproduce and raise children); now I wanted to know what God had to say about the topic. In the years to come I listened intently to the words of the prophets and scoured the scriptures for evidence of God’s opinion on the matter of women and motherhood. Nowhere in my study of the doctrine did I find support for the cultural attitudes I loathed. Nor did I find anything that remotely hinted at a “thou shalt grow up, get married, and make babies.” Instead I heard the prophets teaching me to “Be Smart” and get all the education I could get. I heard message after message teaching me that I had a worth beyond my fertility and domestic skills. I found confirmation that women are equal to men and that not only could I make valuable contributions to the kingdom of God, but that those contributions were not dependent on how young I got married or how many children I had. God didn’t just have an opinion about womanhood, he had a powerful doctrine that made the case for strong, educated women of God who could change the world and build up His kingdom.
I was excited. God valued me as a woman. I had gifts and talents that were needed and that I could offer him because I was a woman; and that value was independent of marriage or children. However, my studies also brought forth undeniable evidence for the case my mother had made about the eternal importance of motherhood. While my worth was not determined by my ability to marry and have children, that in no way ruled out the importance of motherhood. In fact, what I found brought about an entirely new perspective to my investigation of the topic. I found that because God understands the power of women and respects and values them for who they are, he has offered them one of THE most important roles in his plan for the salvation of his children. He offers them the opportunity to be mothers. He gives us that honor. He gives us that choice.
Indeed, one of the most powerful influences on my testimony of motherhood was when my oldest sister and lifelong hero made that very choice. My sister—the one who bungee jumped off the highest bridge in the state of Washington at age 14, slept in snow caves she helped build on Mt. Hood, beat an entire group of teenage Boy Scouts to the top of the highest mountain in Utah, preached the gospel in Eastern Europe just years after the fall of communism, and studied and worked as a microbiologist—made the decision to become a mother without any hesitation or doubt. She did not fit the stereotype of the boy crazy, baby hungry female I had imagined up over the years, causing me to question my original prejudice. What is more, our family has a tradition of sending weekly emails that began right about the time my sister had her first little girl. I would drink in every email she would send from whatever part of the country she was living in to learn of her incredible adventures. Those emails changed my life. This amazing, powerful, opinionated, adventurous woman I had looked up to all my life would write of her children and the challenges and adventures of motherhood with so much love and excitement that I became infected with her testimony. My mother had been right: even in comparison with the adventurous life my sister had lived before she got married and had children, it was easy to see that marriage and motherhood were her greatest adventures.
My quest to understand the truth about being a woman and mother had changed my entire perspective on growing up, getting married, and having babies. It was not a mindless, culturally dominated practice that had to be avoided. It was a divine adventure I wanted. Nonetheless, neither my quest to fully understand the power of being a woman and mother, nor my quest for an unconventionally adventurous life were over. As the years passed, my pursuit of adventure drew me to the field of International Relations and Development. I studied political science, economics, quantitative research methods, the realities of war and oppression, and the millions of different possibilities for development throughout the world. My studies also lead me to real world experiences like traveling to an indigenous village in Guatemala, working for an international humanitarian organization, developing and conducting my own field research in Mexico, and actively participating in political and development-related clubs and competitions.
Incredibly, everywhere I went in pursuit of adventure and everything I studied in an effort to understand and solve the world’s numberless problems always brought me back to the critical role of women, marriage, family, and motherhood. (Though I cannot cram everything I have learned into one blog post, a good starting point—if you are interested—is the work of Professor Valerie Hudson. Look her up!). And then something even more incredible happened, I served a mission. When I opened my call and read “Chile, Santiago North Mission” I felt two powerful confirmations: 1) Chile truly was the place where the Lord needed me to serve and 2) God was on board with where I was directing my life—adventures and all. What I could not know then was the profound impact my mission would have on my testimony of the family. As a missionary, you are not only privileged to preach the gospel, but you are also given the unique opportunity to enter and observe hundreds of different homes. From the rich to the poor, the strong to the broken, the religious to the worldly, every home told a story and spoke to the undeniable truth that family is at the root of it all.
Upon returning from my mission, I wanted marriage and family and—as I had longed for all those years ago—I knew exactly why I wanted it. Not only that, I also knew that it would be the greatest adventure and challenge of my entire life. As I have documented on this blog, finding those things has truly been an unconventionally adventurous journey. I think God knew that even though I had come to develop a powerful testimony of marriage and motherhood, my Charlotte heart still longed to “be a pirate” in one way or another . . . and so he lead me to Mexico where I fell in love with the most amazing man (who actually proposed to me dressed up as a pirate!). Together, we have experienced more adventure than I could have possibly imagined as a 13-year-old girl dreaming of adventure on the high sea. Growing up and getting married turned out to be a bigger adventure than all my wildest dreams. It humbles me to know not just how well God knows me and the desires of my heart, but also to know that he has granted me the fulfillment of those desires.
And now, together, my husband and I have made the choice to bring a child into the world. Now I am going to be a mother. Of all the things I have ever done, becoming a mother has been the most physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually demanding thing I have ever done (and I have not even given birth yet!). It is an adventure words fail to describe and that a lifetime of adventure-seeking would never find. There is nothing like the moment I heard my baby’s heartbeat for the first time or saw his little body moving around on the ultrasound screen. There is nothing like knowing that there is another life inside of me and that this little boy will soon be mine to love and teach and raise up to the Lord. Really, I have yet to begin the incredible and demanding adventure of motherhood, and I know I have no clue what I am in for (and maybe that's a good thing!). However, what I do know is that the decision and lifelong commitment to be a mother is one of THE most important things I can EVER do in my entire life. It will be one of my greatest contributions to the world and to the work of God. I know that.
Perhaps this has been too long of a story to make a such a simple point, but for all its simplicity it is also profound and it has taken me all these years to understand it at this depth. So here it is: truly intelligent women recognize the divinity of who they are and what they are capable of doing as righteous women and mothers. We know these things, not because we have been culturally brainwashed to believe it, but because experience and investigation of the truth have brought us to this undeniable conclusion. I pray that the world can one day understand the true value of women and their phenomenal power to shape the fate of nations and the destiny of God’s children now and in the eternities.
