Mother At Home
Beware of the subtle ways Satan employs to take you from "The Plan of God" and true happiness. One of Satan's most effective approaches is to demean the role of wife and mother in the home.
This is an attack at the very heart of God's plan to foster love between husband and wife, and to nurture children in an
atmosphere of understanding, peace and appreciation and support. Much of the violence that is rampant in the world today is the harvest of weakened homes.
Government and social plans will not effectively correct that nor can the best efforts of schools and churches fully compensate for the absence of the tender care of a compassionate mother and wife in the home.
This morning President Hinckley spoke of the importance of women. Study this message. As a mother guided by the Lord, you weave a fabric of character in your children from threads of truth through careful instruction and worthy example.
You imbue the traits of honesty, faith in God, duty, respect for others, self-confidence, the desire to contribute, to learn, to give, in your trusting children's minds and hearts. No day-care center can do that. It is your sacred right and privilege.
Of course, as a woman you can do exceptionally well in the workplace, but is that the best use of your divinely appointed talents and feminine traits? As a husband, don't encourage your wife to go to work to help in your divinely appointed responsibility of providing resources if you can possibly help it.
As the prophets have counseled: possible with the help of the Lord, as parents work together to keep mother in the home. Your presence there will strengthen the self-confidence of your children and decrease the chance of emotional challenges.
Moreover, as you teach truth by word and example, those children will come to understand who they are and what they can obtain as divine children of Father in Heaven.
I know I have been speaking of the ideal and you may be disturbed because your life may not now fit that mold. I promise you that through your obedience and continuing faith in Jesus Christ and your understanding of the whole Plan of Happiness, even if important parts of it aren't present in your life now, they will be yours in the Lord's due time.
I also promise you that you can have significant growth and happiness now in your present circumstances. As a daughter or son of God, live whatever portion of the plan you can, the best you are able.
Your desire to be a wife and mother may not have its total fulfillment here, but it will in His time as you live in faith and obedience to merit it. Don't be lured away from the Plan of Our God to the ways of the world where motherhood is belittled, femininity is decried, and the divinely established role of a wife and mother is mocked.
Let the world go its way. You follow the plan of the Lord for the greatest measure of true, eternal achievement, and the fullness of happiness. The lack of promised blessings for which you qualify will be fully rectified in this life or in the next.
Excerpt from Richard G. Scott's Oct. 1996 Gen. Conf. Address: