There was a time in my life when I felt I was missing out on experiencing what I thought was the conventional view of raising a family with a husband and a wife, children and a home. This view represented security, stability, and comfort to me.   

I’d been raised in a typical household of its time, where it was the woman’s job to wash the dishes, do the laundry, cook the meals, and in general take care of the more common aspects of running a household. The man, in turn, would take out the trash, mow the lawn, shovel snow, repair anything broken, and take the car to be serviced when needed. Although this was something of a generalization, it was formulated in my thinking at a young age, and I willingly learned those tasks associated with woman’s work and generally avoided the ones that I was taught should be done by men, preparing for a day when I would be married and have a husband to do them.

At one point after my husband and I divorced, I owned my own home, was a single-parent of two, and in order to cut costs I attempted to do many of the repairs and projects in my home myself. In addition to my training as a homemaker, I got do-it-yourself books from the library and spoke at length to employees in hardware stores in the hope of gathering the knowledge and the courage to tackle projects like replacing a toilet seat, repairing a leaky faucet, and even restoring hardwood floors. Armed with the help of more experienced people, I still approached these projects with reluctance and, in some cases, profound trepidation. I always complained verbally to my two young sons and silently to myself at the onset of these projects, and, needless to say, I encountered many problems in my attempts to successfully complete anything with this negative mind-set. 

I reasoned that if it were in my God-created capacity to embody both the masculine and feminine qualities, it was also my right to express both equally, effectively, and effortlessly.

What might normally have taken an hour or two to accomplish took me four or five, and as a result of my frustration and inexperience I was often left with something else needing to be fixed in the process. This only reaffirmed my belief that a man should be doing most of the projects I was undertaking. These times would become opportunities to relive occasions where I felt disappointed with men who I perceived had not been there for me when I needed them at various stages of my life. 

And then a turning point came. I had been studying the chapter on “Marriage” in Science and Health and came across these words: “. . . the time cometh of which Jesus spake, when he declared that in the resurrection there should be no more marrying nor giving in marriage, but man would be as the angels. Then shall Soul rejoice in its own, in which passion has no part. Then white-robed purity will unite in one person masculine wisdom and feminine love, spiritual understanding and perpetual peace” (p. 64). And located in the margin next to this text were the words “Progressive development.”

I realized that for several years I had been halfheartedly utilizing my “manhood” qualities to get things done around the house but had done so begrudgingly, instead of seeing these tasks as opportunities to utilize both masculine and feminine qualities together to express who I was as God’s complete idea.

I began to recognize where I had already been demonstrating this unity of “one person [with] masculine wisdom and feminine love” in my daily activities with raising my boys and running a household. That in itself, it seemed to me, was demonstration of “progressive development” on my part. I realized that it wasn’t necessary to wait for a time somewhere in the future where an event such as marriage might occur for me to experience “perpetual peace,” but that as God’s reflection I was already showing evidence of this fact in my experience and could claim it as true for myself right now.  

My whole outlook changed as if an impasse had been removed. I reasoned that if it were in my God-created capacity to embody both the masculine and feminine qualities, it was also my right to express both equally, effectively, and effortlessly. I remembered how many opportunities I’d already had to demonstrate courage, strength, and discipline as well as to nurture, and to express beauty, poise, and grace throughout my life. These were qualities in fact that I had expressed since childhood when I was affectionately called a tomboy by family and friends—even while also loving fancy dresses and ballet class. 

I felt exonerated from the sense that I was somehow being forced to step out of character and become masculine in order to get my household projects done or that I needed a man present to do them. I was able to exhibit the full range of qualities because God was their source and I was His likeness. As Science and Health states, “Man and woman as coexistent and eternal with God forever reflect, in glorified quality, the infinite Father-Mother God” (p. 516).

I was much freer in my approach to everything I did from then on. For the first time, I felt no lack in being unmarried because each time I acknowledged the masculine or feminine, I knew I was acknowledging God who was ever present and whom I reflected as a complete spiritual idea lacking nothing. This opened the door wide for opportunities to find more ways to express those qualities and for the help that I thought I needed, to be manifested. 

On one occasion, with the sale of my home, my closing date was suddenly moved up and I found myself needing to pack an entire three-story house in one day. The movers were coming the next day, and I hadn’t had time to prepare for the move, much less organize it. In frustration I sat down at the kitchen table not knowing what to do, when the phone rang and a friend in a neighboring town whom I hadn’t spoken to in many months was calling, wanting to come for a visit. I explained my situation, and she was at my house in half an hour. 

Together we worked at packing, boxing, labeling, and moving heavy furniture. Working throughout the day and well into the night we completed the entire job, and even cleaned the rooms as we went. It was a daunting task but done with joy and laughter and much gratitude on my part. To me, this had more to do with evidence of God’s provision and less to do with two women struggling to get a job done that men should have been there to do. I was buoyant with happiness and a sense of accomplishment.

I continue to be grateful for a fuller recognition that our God-created identity is truly a “compound idea” as Science and Health teaches (see p. 475), in which each of us includes divinely united attributes of manhood and womanhood. It unlocks our potential. And this freedom to express our completeness is ours today—and forever.