As I drove past the church parking lot on an errand, I saw that my neighbor wrestled to manage a plastic tablecloth in the wind. The balloons, color coordinated for a Relief Society birthday party, knocked around perilously, and I wondered if they would still be there when the outdoor-socially-distanced-grab-a-cupcake-and-visit safely-party began. When I arrived twenty minutes later, there were just a few women, masked and shivering along the sidewalk, enduring the cold for connection. A sister I love noticed me and held my arm and inquired, for real, how I was doing. Later, another sister said she heard I had been through a hard time. Then she listened, just listened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had to leave quickly, but I am glad for the ten or fifteen minutes I shared with my friends. I know that in those minutes, two friends gave something vital to me. I was the only one there with church keys, so I was able to open the building for the women to take shelter from the wind. As I write this, I remember what Mark said when I told him the story, “Mom, you and your Relief Society hijinks.” Beyond the “rebellion” of a few women sheltering inside the church during a pandemic in order to talk for a few minutes, I would say Relief Society has always been about helping women and families come inside from the wind. Happy birthday, Relief Society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I drove past the church parking lot on an errand, I saw that my neighbor wrestled to manage a plastic tablecloth in the wind. The balloons, color coordinated for a Relief Society birthday party, knocked around perilously, and I wondered if they would still be there when the outdoor-socially-distanced-grab-a-cupcake-and-visit safely-party began. When I arrived … Continue reading 179 years old<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,40,36,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-hope","category-jesus-christ","category-life-according-to-angela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19740"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19750,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19740\/revisions\/19750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}