"Every Woman is a Mother . . . "

Only a few minutes into President Russell M. Nelson's concluding talk in the General Women's Session last General Conference, President Nelson said something that made me do a double take.

Please note that anytime I use the word mother, I am not talking only about women who have given birth or adopted children in this life. I am speaking about all of our Heavenly Parents’ adult daughters. Every woman is a mother by virtue of her eternal divine destiny.

I was not surprised that President Nelson opened his definition of mother to include all women. What surprised me was that he said that "Every woman is a mother by virtue of her eternal divine destiny." I wonder exactly how literally he meant that statement to be taken, what it might mean for the final few stages of the Plan of Salvation, and exactly how he defines "destiny."

We know that, in the Plan of Salvation, it is possible for people to become eternal, heavenly parents, in more ways than one. If a woman has children and is sealed to them, then she and they will be a family unit for all eternity, so long as they all reach the Celestial Kingdom, but not all women have children. A woman who reach the highest level of the Celestial Kingdom together with her husband can have an eternal increase and thus become a mother, even if she wasn't one already, but not all women reach the highest level of the Celestial Kingdom. There may be other ways for women to have the title of mother as part of their "eternal divine destiny," but those are the only two that come to mind. Does President Nelson really mean that every woman will become a mother in either of those ways? Both of those ways require the woman to reach the Celestial Kingdom. Does President Nelson really mean that every woman will qualify for the Celestial Kingdom?

I doubt it. Most women are wonderful people, but even so, the Celestial Kingdom is a fairly high bar. There must have been at least a handful of women in the history of the universe who didn't quite make the cut. If "Every woman is a mother by virtue of her eternal divine destiny," maybe President Nelson takes "destiny" to mean something different than what it means to me. Maybe he's referring to each woman's potential to become a mother.

I don't know. To me, "destiny" has a specific meaning, but if President Nelson is willing to tweak the definition of "mother," perhaps he's willing to tweak the definition of "destiny" too. Or maybe there's something about women's "eternal divine destiny" that qualifies her to be a mother, even if she isn't sealed and doesn't have spirit children.

Or perhaps President Nelson never meant for anyone to take his statement as literally or examine it as closely as I just did.

Still, mother isn't just a noun. It can also be a verb meaning to nurture. If the definition of the noun mother can include "a woman who mothers," then every woman can be a mother, so long as each woman nurtures someone or something in some way at some point. That is an exceptionally broad definition of mother, but it's one way to make sure that every woman can fit under it. I don't think that's what President Nelson meant, but I'm not sure he did mean.

It's hard to imagine every woman literally becoming a mother, but maybe they will, or maybe the statement wasn't meant to be taken literally. Maybe all women are or will be mothers, or maybe at least some won't. It's hard for me to tell. For now, I'll take President Nelson's word for it, whatever he meant his words to mean.