Sheri L. Dew
Neither man nor woman is perfect or complete without the other. Thus, no marriage or family, no ward or stake is likely to reach its full potential until husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, men and women work together in unity of purpose, respecting and relying upon each other's strengths.Collection: Marriage
Indeed, this life is a test. It is a test of many things - of our convictions and priorities, our faith and our faithfulness, our patience and our resilience, and in the end, our ultimate desires.Collection: Patience
There is no greater name for a leader than mother or father. There is no leadership more important than parenthood.Collection: Leadership
You were born to lead as mothers and fathers, because nowhere is righteous leadership more crucial than in the family.Collection: Leadership
For the Holy Ghost blesses us with optimism and wisdom at times of challenge that we simply cannot muster on our own.Collection: Wisdom
Through the years, I, like you, have experienced pressures and disappointments that would have crushed me had I not been able to draw upon a source of wisdom and strength far greater than my own. He has never forgotten or forsaken me, and I have come to know for myself that Jesus is the Christ and that this is His Church.Collection: Wisdom
I know how to set an irrigation tube, and I helped with the harvest. I learned the law of the harvest without even knowing I was learning it. On the farm, you learn early that you reap what you sow.Collection: Learning
Satan has declared war on motherhood. He knows that those who rock the cradle can rock his earthly empire. And he knows that without righteous mothers loving and leading the next generation, the Kingdom of God will fail.Collection: War
The power of the priesthood heals, protects, and inoculates all of the righteous against the powers of darkness.
There will be days when you feel defeated, exhausted, and plain old beat-up by life's whiplash. People you love will disappoint you - and you will disappoint them. You'll probably struggle with some kind of mortal appetite. Some days it will feel as though the veil between Heaven and Earth is made of reinforced concrete.
Motherhood is more than bearing children, though it is certainly that. It is the essence of who we are as women. It defines our very identity, our divine stature and nature, and the unique traits our Father gave us.
There is a direct relationship between how we feel about Jesus Christ and how we see ourselves. We cannot increase our devotion to the Savior without also obtaining a greater sense of purpose, identity, and conviction.
We are all farmers tending a little part of the Lord's vineyard.
I drove a tractor almost as soon as I could reach the pedals.
Motherhood is not what was left over after our Father blessed His sons with priesthood ordination. It was the most ennobling endowment He could give His daughters, a sacred trust that gave women an unparalleled role in helping His children keep their second estate.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is all about people. It's about leaving the ninety and nine and going into the wilderness after those who are lost. It's about bearing one another's burdens, with the ultimate burden anyone can bear being walking through this life without light.
My whole life, I've felt like I didn't quite measure up.
Satan understands the power of men and women united in righteousness. He is still stinging from his banishment into eternal exile after Michael led the hosts of heaven, comprised of valiant men and women united in the cause of Christ, against him.
Our Father knew exactly what He was doing when He created us. He made us enough alike to love each other, but enough different that we would need to unite our strengths and stewardships to create a whole.
No 11-year-old girl wants to be 5-10. I always felt big and unattractive.
As sisters in Zion, we can be obstacles to the adversary's conspiracy against families and virtue.
It is easier to motivate people to do something difficult than something easy.
We were all born to lead.
The blessings of the priesthood are available to every righteous man and woman. We may all receive the Holy Ghost, obtain personal revelation, and be endowed in the temple, from which we emerge 'armed' with power.
The decisions you are making right now and that you will make in the foreseeable months and years will absolutely determine whether you pivot towards the world or towards the Lord.
If we don't do as well as we know how and we are prepared to do, it'll be largely because we act and make choices as though we're going to stay here, as though this life is all there is, when that is not the case.
There isn't anyone who wants to see me married more than I do.
I had a lot of friends who were boys. I played ball with them, but we didn't date. They didn't ask me that much because I wasn't cute enough or because I didn't drink or party.
I was a friend during school time, but not much after that. By the time I got to BYU, I was a social mess, an absolute misfit. There is not a shyer, more pathetic kid who stepped on that BYU campus than me.
Relief Society can help us turn away from the world, for its express purpose is to help sisters and their families come unto Christ.
As a young girl, I saw commitment in my grandmother, who helped Grandpa homestead our farm on the Kansas prairie. Somehow they outlasted the Dust Bowl, the Depression, and the tornadoes that terrorize the Great Plains.
It is by letting the world go and coming unto Christ that we increasingly live as women of God.
Very simply, our physical and spiritual safety lies in never even getting close to the line that separates light from dark, good from evil.
I am a basketball junkie, and as a product of the great basketball state of Kansas, I have watched many a ball game between the University of Kansas Jayhawks and the Tar Heels.
Being steadfast and immovable with our heels in tar on the Lord's side of the line is the only strategy that works long-term against Lucifer.
Men and women who sell their birthright for a mess of pottage will tell you that their demise began with something small, with some seemingly insignificant breach of integrity that escalated. The little things do matter. It is not possible to profess righteousness while flirting with sin.
I am innately very shy, and I have struggled with that challenge for years.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is for everyone. We are all significant parts of the whole. I never think of myself as single; I think of myself as Sheri, a member of the Lord's Church.
Sisters, some will try to persuade you that because you are not ordained to the priesthood, you have been shortchanged. They are simply wrong, and they do not understand the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Most significantly, the fullness of the priesthood contained in the highest ordinances of the house of the Lord can be received only by a man and woman together.
If you are in a position to influence someone, you are a leader.
You cannot have a relationship with someone you can't trust.
By virtue of who we are, what we know, the promises we made to our Heavenly Father, and the fact that we are living now and where we are living, I absolutely think we were all born to lead.
Think about what there is to learn from your heritage, good and bad, and about what you want to cultivate and not cultivate.
Sisters, we as women are not diminished by priesthood power - we are magnified by it. I know this is true, for I have experienced it again and again.
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.
The Savior isn't our last chance; He is our only chance. Our only chance to overcome self-doubt and catch a vision of who we may become. Our only chance to repent and have our sins washed clean.
Our responsibility is to learn to draw upon the power of the Atonement. Otherwise, we walk through mortality relying solely on our own strength.
There is nothing this confused world needs more, nothing that inspires a greater sense of well-being, nothing that has greater power to strengthen families than the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The pain of loneliness seems to be part of the mortal experience. But the Lord in His mercy has made it so that we need never deal with the challenges of mortality alone.