Featured on my Facebook page, and posted here for archiving.
Warnick Wadley (1908-1973), of Providence, Utah, was a writer, a mother of five, a member of the YMMIA General Board, a teacher.
She valued home life, but made her home serve her, not the other way around. “First, if we can think of a house as a tool or piece of equipment for family living, we can make it serve our changing needs. Second, beyond certain minimum essentials, the amount of work that gets done is less important than our attitudes; happy relationships are more important than meticulous housekeeping. Third, even young children can help enough to really count, if we take time to teach them – more readily if they have a part appropriate to their age level.”
Her home was proof that “young children can help enough to really count” – when Angelyn’s oldest child was only five years old, and her youngest not yet born, Angelyn survived an attack of polio. She learned to walk again, but she was never again able to raise her arms or use her hands for housekeeping. Of necessity, she became “a back-seat driver at home. The work is scheduled and assigned so the children take turns getting meals, washing dishes, and other routine chores.”
In her work with the young women of the Church, Angelyn wrote manuals with such titles as “Be the Girl of Your Dreams” and “Someday You Will Marry.” Sounds like the stereotypical 1950s, doesn’t it? But no:
“I don’t believe women are on earth exclusively to be mothers. I think this life is for the discipline and development of our immortal spirits. A woman who does what she can about the growth of her own personality and the salvation of her own soul, has more to give her family than one who ‘lives only for her children.’”
Speaking from her own experience, Angelyn encouraged young women to “look at this life as part of a larger, longer life. Our success and happiness here is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. Life on this earth is uncertain and full of hazards. For our own protection we need faith, because no other resource can help us feel so surely that if we can be reasonably valiant whatever our situation, some good can come through it.”