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By Brenda Casey, Greely, Co

I have sweet assurance because I know I have a divine role as a daughter of God.

I was nervous to teach my Mia Maids about their divine roles as women. I’m married, and though we’ve been trying for a while to have kids, I’m not a mom yet. I also work outside the home. While I know I am where I need to be, I felt like the very last person to be teaching about a women’s divine role. What did I have to share with these girls about being a wife and a mother when it seemed like I was not an ideal example of either?

Feeling completely lost, I asked my visiting teaching companion, and a sister we visited, about being mothers and how they felt about their divine role. One shared the memory of the many times she called her mother for advice about a problem, and having her mother always end by asking her what she needed to learn. The other sister shared her experience of supporting and encouraging her spouse through a job loss. She also spoke about washing clothes, ironing, cleaning up after, and feeding her grandchildren who had recently moved in with her and her husband. I could tell she didn’t think it was a hardship because she almost twinkled with love and joy.

As I continued to study for my lesson, I kept coming back to the February Visiting Teaching Message, ‘Understand the Divine Roles of Women,’ and what Sister Julie B. Beck had said. After bearing her testimony of our Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness, she said: “That plan has a part for His daughters… The half of our Father’s plan that creates life, that nurtures souls, that promotes growth, that influences everything else was given to us. We can’t delegate it. We can’t pass it off to anyone. It’s ours. We can refuse it, we can deny it, but it’s still our part, and we’re accountable for it. There will come a day when we will all remember what we knew before we were born. We will remember that we fought in a great conflict for this privilege...” And it was like I finally got it.

I suddenly understood that our divine roll within our Father in Heaven’s plan gives every men and women the opportunity to love and serve other of our Heavenly Father’s children. I understood that these roles are different, but equal and equally important. I knew that we fought for the privilege to be a part of this plan and to participate in these divine roles.

I thought of the women I knew -- my mother, my sisters, my visiting teaching sisters, my friends, my co-workers, and my young women -- and whether they were wives or mothers or not, I could suddenly see the ways that they each fulfilled their divine role to create, nurture, promote growth, and influence everything and everyone around them. I was able to bear a simple, but sincere, testimony of this divine role to my Mia Maids.

I’m kind of surprised that I am still the same person on the outside; I’m not suddenly pregnant and I’m still a working woman. The only thing that has changed is that I now have the sweet assurance that I, too, as a daughter of God, am part of my Heavenly Father’s plan and can embrace and fulfill my unique part of this divine role right here, right now.