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Mette Ivie Harrison is a well-known mystery and young-adult novelist and frequent BCC guest. She is the author of The Book of Laman, and the forthcoming The Book of Abish, published by BCC Press.

Sometimes Mormons joke about the reality of what heaven looks like, especially for women. I suspect this is doctrine that the institutional church may be turning away from (like the doctrine of ruling planets that makes us just look really weird to other Christians), but the idea that heaven will just be a continuation of all the work women do now is, well, exhausting. In heaven, women will have billions and billions of children, as if gestation happens there as it does here on earth. Women will continue to do visiting teaching (at least that’s what my last Relief Society President said). They will continue to make a lovely home for their husbands and their already birthed children, grandchildren, and so on. There will be no rest or respite in heaven, at least not for women.

Here’s what I have to say about this: one of the best things about moving away from traditional Mormon beliefs has been rejecting exhausted heaven. I don’t believe in that heaven anymore, and it doesn’t have power me when other people tell me that it’s “true.” Though honestly, I must say, it’s mostly men who are the ones who say it’s true, because they didn’t live it. Most women shake their heads and refuse to say anything good about it (though there are still a few who tell you that it’s “the best time in your life.” That’s mostly, I suspect, because they hated the teenager stage when their kids made choices of their own once in a while.)

I can’t believe that God, even the Mormon patriarchal God, has no idea what it’s like to be a woman with young children, very little money, and to be constantly sleep deprived. It doesn’t make me holy. It makes me cranky, short-tempered, and unable to truly minister to anyone else, let alone to be a good mother to my children. It ruins your sex life for years. It makes it hard to think that anyone who gives you an extra job is better than a sadist. It makes you angry and jealous of every woman who has it better than you do or who is in a different stage of life. It is the opposite of the heaven I would want.

My idea of heaven would be more like sitting at home and video-chatting my kids and other family members. Occasional visits with friends at restaurants where someone else is cooking. Also, TV shows I love always being available despite Netflix changes. Snacks and chocolate that never make me fat. The ability to get an exercise high for as long as I want without being exhausted or getting injured as I age. The taste of food when I’m really, really hungry, without the pain of actually being hungry. Books everywhere. And some kind of device that would allow me to download the good ideas I have immediately, without having to type them in somewhere.

Hmm, come to think of it, that heavenly life looks surprisingly like my life right now. After almost all my children are grown up and have become wonderful adults who love me and remain connected to me, no matter what their relationship to the church has become. I’m old, which is a pain, but I’d trade all the injuries I’m dealing with for never having to change a dirty diaper again. And I really wasn’t that resentful of diapers per se, just the constant never-ending list of chores and the judgment of everyone around me that somehow I wasn’t good enough because my house was always a mess.

I don’t want exhausted heaven. I want a heaven of joyous connection where the work doesn’t have to be transferred to someone else. I’m afraid that I fear that Mormon men don’t consider who is doing the work in heaven, so their vision is a little different from mine. Yet another reason that I think we need some more women (and POC and queer folx and non-binary and trans friends, too) in the higher echelons, working on changing the doctrine so that heaven feels more like something I’d sign up for in a heartbeat, instead of something that I think to myself—maybe if I work a little less hard here, I can also work a little less hard there and end up in the Terrestial Kingdom.

If no one wants to go to the highest levels of the Celestial Kingdom, or no women do, maybe we should rethink it?

*Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash