Day 88: An Elect Lady

 My personal journey of self awareness started with the simple desire to know more about the women in the scriptures.

Since my church is studying the Doctrine & Covenants (basically history of the early days of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints [LDS]) this year, I thought I would start there.

Doctrine & Covenants (D&C) 25 is the blessing bestowed upon Emma Smith, wife to Joseph Smith, Jr. (the first prophet of LDS church). In verse 3 it states:

"Behold, thy sins are forgiven thee, and thou art an elect lady, whom I have called."

The words "elect lady" caught my attention. They evoked an image of a woman who was tall, beautiful, graceful, stylish, demure, calm, patient, loving, kind, understanding.

I wanted to become that woman. I wanted to become an elect lady.

As a result, I started reading books about style - I can't do anything about being tall...okay I can improve my posture so I appear taller. But I knew I could do something about being more stylish.

My grandmother was trained to match colors, lines & patterns to a person's skin coloring. The whole concept of skin analysis took off in the 80's when women were learning what season they belonged too or if they could wear warm/cool colors. Well, my grandmother was doing that long before it became a craze & she did not group you into season. My grandmother took the time - a long time - to drape color after color after color across you (so the color was against your face) and looked for obvious changes...like if the skin was sallow (not a good color) or if the skin looked rosy & bright (a good color).

Since I can no longer glean this information directly from my grandmother & my memory of how exactly she did it is a bit hazy I decided to start researching. Thus, all the different books I read the discoveries about myself I learned along the way.

And for the record, I learned in Relief Society lesson that elect means chosen. I kind of already knew that, but when you say "a chosen lady" instead of "an elect lady" a different image comes to mind. "A chosen lady" is a blank slate - short, tall, big, little, young, old, married, single, divorced, widowed, etc... "A chosen lady" can be exactly who you are already.

Happy Walking!