Guest Post: The Power to Bless

Guest Post by Naomi McAllister Noorda

Photo by Yaroslav Shuraev

Recently my husband injured his back. I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of my husband crying out in pain and crumpling to the floor when he got up to help our baby.

He could not get off the floor, and I felt physically and spiritually powerless to help him. I wished that I were strong enough to lift him off the floor and back into bed. I wished that I had better first aid training or a medical background.

But what I wanted more than anything in that moment, sitting on my bedroom floor at 3 AM with my injured husband, was to give him a priesthood blessing of healing. After all, as a temple ordinance worker I regularly got to anoint and bless women by the laying on of hands in the temple. After all, isn’t the church always telling women we need to start using priesthood power more? But I was held back by knowing my husband (supportive though he is of my fiesty feminist heart) would be uncomfortable with this, and right now was about helping him. I was also held back knowing that I could face church disciplinary action for doing so.

So instead, I offered a prayer in which I asked for God’s help and plead for my husband’s healing and comfort. Eventually he was able to make it off the floor and back into bed.

The next morning, when it was a reasonable hour to call friends from our ward, we had two men come over and give my husband a blessing of healing. They anointed his head with consecrated oil, and then sealed that blessing. They pronounced in the blessing that he would have a full and quick recovery. They promised that he would have many happy, healthy years ahead of him, and would be a blessing to our young family.

As I held my baby daughter and listened to the words of this blessing, I couldn’t help but notice the stark contrast between prayer and priesthood  blessings of healing.

I asked, they pronounced.

I plead, they promised.

At some point that morning, I mentioned to my husband how I wished that I could have just given him a blessing right away. He agreed emphatically, also pointing out that I did the closest thing I could do by praying with him, and that prayer is just as good.

I agree that God hears and answers our prayers, meeting women where we are despite current institutional limitations to exercising God’s power. But it still seems sad that in a moment of acute need, I felt so needlessly powerless when I could have been empowered to bless my husband using the priesthood power we are both endowed with.

The dichotomy of the church nagging women to understand and draw on priesthood power without telling them how to use it, while simultaneously putting up barriers to women actually using it (such as only ordaining men, and disciplining women who do give blessings of healing), is an irony not lost on me.

Naomi has a masters degree in family studies and human development from BYU. She loves thrifting, serving in her ward’s relief society, and being a mom to her daughter.