The greatest lessons I have learned about the enabling power have come from the quiet example of my wife in our own home. I watched her persevere through intense and continuous morning sickness and vomiting during each of her three pregnancies. She literally was sick all day every day for eight months with each pregnancy. That challenge was never removed from her. But together we prayed that she would be strengthened, and she indeed was blessed through the enabling power of the Atonement to do physically what in her own power she could not do. Sister Bednar is a remarkably capable and competent woman, and over the years I have seen how she has been magnified to handle the mocking and scorn that come from a secular society when a Latter-day Saint woman heeds prophetic counsel and makes the family and home and the nurturing of children her highest priorities. In today's world a righteous woman and mother in Zion will need both priesthood support and the enabling power of the Atonement. I thank and pay tribute to Susan for helping me to learn such invaluable lessons.

There is more to a foundation of eternal marriage than a pretty face or an attractive figure. There is more to consider than popularity or charisma. As you seek an eternal companion, look for someone who is developing the essential attributes that bring happiness: a deep love of the Lord and of His commandments, a determination to live them, one that is kindly understanding, forgiving of others, and willing to give of self, with the desire to have a family crowned with beautiful children and a commitment to teach them the principles of truth in the home. An essential priority of a prospective wife is the desire to be a wife and mother. She should be developing the sacred qualities that God has given His daughters to excel as a wife and mother: patience, kindliness, a love of children, and a desire to care for them rather than seeking professional pursuits. She should be acquiring a good education to prepare for the demands of motherhood. A prospective husband should also honor his priesthood and use it in service to others. Seek a man who accepts his role as provider of the necessities of life, has the capacity to do it, and is making concerted efforts to prepare himself to fulfill those responsibilities.

I suggest that you not ignore many possible candidates who are still developing these attributes, seeking the one who is perfected in them. You will likely not find that perfect person, and if you did, there would certainly be no interest in you. These attributes are best polished together as husband and wife.

I am distressed that the modern world's devaluation of motherhood is signaling to my daughter and her friends that preparing to be a homemaker, mother, and wife is "no big deal." This message implies that the recipe for successful parenting is too much like an instant mix: just add water, mix, and heat. I see too many marriages that consist mostly of mixed-up attitudes and heated feelings amid a watered-down home life.

In truth, learning to be a superb mother is a very big deal. Other than a desire for eternal life, I can't think of a more important aspiration for a young woman to have. There is no more meaningful career, no more divine calling, than being a person who truly makes a home. Such a task involves creating and maintaining a total environment of human warmth, intellectual stimulation, and spiritual strength by someone who sees the wellsprings of personal meaning that lie beyond a first glance at a diaper, a frying pan, and a worn tennis shoe.

Many young women are serving missions. Many are preparing to serve, not because they aren’t married or have nothing else to do, but because they have a desire to serve and therefore are being called to the work. The reason so many are going is because in the next generation, Heavenly Father will be sending his Priesthood Army to the earth. And He wants to send them to mothers who have been properly trained and taught in the gospel. And what better training can a young woman have than that of serving a mission!

By the same token, a woman’s righteous and appropriate desires to grow, to develop, and to magnify her talents—desires strongly reinforced by current feminist teachings—also have their extreme manifestations, which can lead to attempts to preempt priesthood leadership, to the advocacy of ideas out of harmony with Church doctrine, or even to the abandonment of family responsibilities.

Can we have it all?

But, my dear granddaughters, you cannot do everything well at the same time. You cannot be a 100 percent wife, a 100 percent mother, a 100 percent church worker, a 100 percent career person, and a 100 percent public-service person at the same time. How can all of these roles be coordinated? Says Sarah Davidson: “The only answer I come up with is that you can have it sequentially. At one stage you may emphasize career, and at another marriage and nurturing young children, and at any point you will be aware of what is missing. If you are lucky, you will be able to fit everything in.” Doing things sequentially—filling roles one at a time at different times—is not always possible, as we know, but it gives a woman the opportunity to do each thing well in its time and to fill a variety of roles in her life. A woman does not necessarily have to track a career like a man does. She may fit more than one career into the various seasons of life. She need not try to sing all of the verses of her song at the same time.

Can we have it all?

Women today are being encouraged by some to have it all—generally, all simultaneously: money, travel, marriage, motherhood, and separate careers in the world. Sarah Davidson, in an article entitled “Having It All,” comments about forging an identity, building a career, developing a craft, and having a family. “I do not yet understand how a woman can successfully split herself between home and the market place. Fifteen years of feminist theory and action have taught us that sacrificing one for the other does not satisfy, but having both together simultaneously is so difficult that no one I know has found anything but the most quirky and incomplete solution.” (Professional Esquire, June 1984, p. 54.) Her article does not deal with the heartaches and frustrations of single parents or others thrust into very difficult circumstances due to divorce, death of spouse, or hardship. Rather, the article focuses on the issue of the woman who is intent on having it all, trying to simultaneously coordinate the roles of professional life, marriage, and motherhood. Some will no doubt disagree with her conclusion, and there may be many exceptions, but she goes on to tell of three women who are partners in a New York law firm and observes that their personal lives are frustrated and unhappy. “The problem, of course, is that family happiness is less clearly definable and more often elusive than career success.”

Joseph Smith made many prophetic statements that last to our day. Some of them seemed preposterous at the time. Lillie Freeze recalls one such. "He said the time would come when none but the women of the Latter-day Saints would be willing to bear children."

In large measure this is already happening today-before our eyes. He said on another occasion that the Saints would be driven and would suffer, but they would go to the Rocky Mountains and there become a great and mighty people. Other recollections of that prophecy do not say a great and "mighty" but a great and "wealthy" people who would be tried more with riches than they ever had been with poverty. This too is happening before our eyes.

One can refuse to bear (beget) children. And one can refuse to bear (love and nurture) begotten children. Both refusals are epidemic in our time.

Those who refuse as husbands and wives to have children are proving themselves already too small for the infinitude of God’s creative powers.

The whole purpose of the creation of the earth was to provide a dwelling place where the spirit children of God might come and be clothed in mortal bodies and, by keeping their second estate, prepare themselves for salvation and exaltation. The whole purpose of the mission of Jesus Christ was to make possible the immortality and eternal life of man. The whole purpose of mothers and fathers should be to live worthy of this blessing and to assist God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ in their work. No greater honor could be given to [men and] women than to assist in this divine plan, and I wish to say without equivocation that a woman will find greater satisfaction and joy and make a greater contribution to mankind by being a wise and worthy mother raising good children than she could make in any other vocation.