LDS Place

There are some women (it has become very many, in fact) who have to work to provide for the needs of their families. To you I say, do the very best you can. I hope that if you are employed full-time you are doing it to ensure that basic needs are met and not simply to indulge in a taste for an elaborate home, fancy cars, and other luxuries. The greatest job that any mother will ever do will be in nurturing, teaching, lifting, encouraging, and rearing her children in righteousness and truth. None other can adequately take her place.

Gordon B. Hinckley

“In “A Little Parable for Mothers” by Temple Bailey, a young mother setting out on her path of life was told that the way would not be easy but that the end would be better than the beginning. She taught her children that life was good. She gave them courage, fortitude, and strength. And finally she was able to teach them to look above the clouds that bring shadows of darkness into this life, to see the glory of God. Knowing how to find their Heavenly Father through the darkness and living by the light of his glory, her children could walk alone. The mother’s journey was over, but the end was better than the beginning because of what she was able to teach her children.”

Typescript, LDS Church Historical Dept., Salt Lake City, Utah.) Barbara B. Smith, Ensign, May 1982, 79

“Some mothers experience pain because of the children they have borne; others feel pain because they do not bear children here. About this Elder John A. Widtsoe was explicit: ‘Women who through no fault of their own cannot exercise the gift of motherhood directly, may do so vicariously.’ For reasons known to the Lord, some women are required to wait to have children. This delay is not easy for any righteous woman. But the Lord’s timetable for each of us does not negate our nature. Some of us, then, must simply find other ways to mother. And all around us are those who need to be loved and led.”

Sheri L. Dew, Ensign, Nov 2001, 96