Having witnessed the outcry that followed this talk, the fact that Elder Renlund's reaction to his wife putting his stethoscope into a shadow box is such a surprise makes me think a lot of folks having those reactions haven't worked with many doctors.
In the time I spent working as a nurse in veterinary medicine, I worked with six different doctors as their nurse, in both exam rooms and in surgery.
Doctors are some of the most neurotic, chronically particular people you could ever work with.
As a nurse, my job was to anticipate the needs of doctors and bring them the things before they would ask for them.
To do that, it often meant knowing where they left their stuff, going and collecting it, and bringing it back to them. Or knowing exactly where their stuff was and leaving it there. Which was the right choice depended entirely on the doctor and their preferences.
Stethoscopes, otoscopes, charts, pens, medicines, the list goes on forever.
It was my job to know where they were at all times and make them instantly accessible at a moment's notice. It's the most important skill a nurse ever learns, and it's a thing that can't really be taught. The better you get at it, the harder it becomes for anyone else to ever take your place. There is no other relationship like the wavelength of a doctor and a nurse who have been working together for many years, the way they can communicate without even having to speak.
There are doctors whose stethoscopes you just don't touch. I worked for doctors whose stethoscopes I never touched.
I worked for other doctors whose stethoscopes I repeatedly took back to their desks a half a dozen times every day. Doctors having access to people who are paid to be attuned to their needs and preferences like this breaks their ability to be normal with other people where this relationship doesn't exist.
As soon as I read details of the story about his wife putting his stethoscope into a shadow box without asking first, I winced immediately and thought to myself "that was a mistake."
But I would think that because I was a good nurse.
Sometimes, you do things for your spouse in a desire to help or to make them happy that just falls flat because you didn't understand them or the situation well enough to know how to help them. My husband is an engineer and a tinkerer. I don't touch or move any of his things without asking first because I don't know what I could be interrupting, what I might break or lose.
And
I also learned that lesson by making that mistake.
To view this story as a public shaming of Sister Renlund presupposes that what she did was a moral failure of some kind, that Elder Renlund presented it as a moral failure when it was a misunderstanding at best. If you've managed to be married for any appreciable amount of time without having what you intended to be a nice gesture go completely wrong...
I dunno, tell us your secret? Because I'm confident that's not the life the rest of us are living.
My husband and I celebrated our tenth anniversary this year.
There are still things about him that baffle me entirely. Eternity scared me at an earlier stage of my life because it seemed like it would get boring eventually.
The idea that decades from now I could still be just as baffled by something he does is an exciting prospect, if I'm honest.
There's no room for boredom when you marry an engineer. That's what I've gathered so far.
P.S. In case Sister Renlund somehow sees this: you're a saint and an angel for being married to a doctor. I could never and I'm endlessly amazed by those who can!
[The follow-up posts two days later after extensive conversation with many different perspectives.]
I get that we've landed on "avoid telling public stories about a spouse's mistakes without making it crystal clear that they've okayed everything you're going to say."
But I'm still concerned how many of you are fine touching your spouse's stuff without asking.
Maybe it's because my marriage includes at least one ADHD weirdo with no object permanence, as well as a large collection of all manner of hobbies. But the fastest (and pretty much the only) way to start a fight in my house is to move something without giving a heads up.
My husband sews. I know not to use his fabric scissors for anything other than fabric.
He works on mechanical watches. I don't move any of those projects at all because the pieces on some of them are smaller than you can possibly imagine.
I knit. He knows to be extremely careful about moving any knitting projects because if he drops even a single stitch, my reaction will be angry, immediate, and disproportional to the situation.
Don't create a household where it's normal for anyone in it to assign ongoing value or utility to other people's stuff, where it can disappear without their consent.
It's not a good way to show respect for the people you love. I say that as someone who grew up in such a house.
The stress I still feel in my body when I can't find something, the sheer panic from having things I treasured disappear, has never left me.
This is not how you make for a responsible adult who "knows better than to just leave their things around."
It's how you make yourself unsafe to someone you care about, who will never fully feel safe in your presence because you don't respect the things they care about.
Respecting my husband's possessions isn't patriarchy. It's the courtesy we each would show to any other person if we were left unattended with their belongings.
The idea that this somehow disappears because we're married to each other is just...
Bring that one up in therapy.
