During her battle against an aggressive cancer, Sister Amy A. Wright described sitting for many hours in an infusion room with other patients “united in my suffering with many who were hoping to be healed.”
Even while they received treatment side-by side, she said “not one person told me what they did for a living, how much money they made, the education they had obtained, where they had traveled, or even the type of car they drove.
“Instead, I was shown pictures, lots of pictures,” she said, with people sharing “These are mine. This is who I love.
“In the face of mortality, the only metric that mattered was family.”
Sister Amy Wright, first counselor in the Primary General Presidency for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, shared on Thursday the capstone message of a two day conference commemorating the 30th anniversary of The Family: A Proclamation to the World.
“I know we are all busy and pulled in a million different directions on any given day,” Sister Wright said to a capacity crowd of students and faculty at BYU’s Gordon B. Hinckley Alumni Center. “Please, I beg of you, seek inspired ways to joyfully include your family in your work, in your calling, in your educational pursuits.”
Focusing on the conference theme “Experiencing Jesus Christ through the Family Proclamation,” Jason Carrol, the Wheatley Institute’s Family Initiative director, joined other speakers in addressing “how the proclamation continues to be an extension of the Savior’s divine mercy and loving help for all of God’s children as they navigate the realities of mortality.”
Brigham Young University President Shane Reese welcomed the audience and recalled exactly where he was in Texas on Sept. 23, 1995, when his wife came home from the general Relief Society meeting and said, “President Hinckley just made a bold pronouncement.”
After she shared details from her notes, Reese remembered asking, “Why did we even need that? Why in the world would we need a proclamation to declare things that are basic, simple, God given truths?”
“It’s exactly as Sheri Dew says,” President Reese continued. “Prophets see around corners, prophets see down the road” and these earlier prophets “saw our day,” he said. “It is my testimony that this proclamation is vital for your generation — vital for you to experience the joy and the happiness associated with God’s plan of happiness for his children on the earth.”
Seeing the full picture
The Family Proclamation “underscores the foundational importance of marriage and children, and most specifically how marriage and children are fundamental to the plan of salvation God’s Plan of happiness,” Sister Wright summarized.
Her message centered on four “foundational truths” in the text, seeking to appreciate more deeply how they are “inseparably connected to Jesus Christ,” including: (1) “marriage between a man and woman is ordained of God,” (2) “the family is central to the creator’s plan,” (3) “all human beings, male and female, are created in the image of God,” and (4) “gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal and eternal identity and purpose.”
Sister Wright compared better understanding of prophetic counsel found in The Family, a Proclamation to the World to the kind of puzzles her family loves to piece together. At first, she said, “a random piece viewed in isolation is difficult to recognize and almost impossible to understand its purpose and how it relates to the other pieces.”
But assembling the full picture, she said “gives much needed context to those misunderstood pieces.”
“Now, if we find a piece we still don’t understand or recognize, a piece that does not seem to fit, we simply set it aside temporarily until additional perspective is established and understood.”
Christ as a champion of children
“We learn from the scriptures that Jesus Christ, as the great creator, is a champion of children,” Sister Wright said. “Raising and teaching children is intended to be a holy and divine experience, offering a deeper understanding of God by participating more intimately in his consecrated work.”
She quoted the late President Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who taught that “the commandment to multiply and replenish the earth has never been rescinded. It is essential to the plan of redemption and is the source of human happiness.”
Sister Wright said the power of procreation is not an incidental part of the plan. “It is the plan of happiness. It is the key to happiness.”
She then cited Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles who in speaking with his wife Ruth, cautioned, “God’s laws are not negotiable. He allows us to disregard them, but we are not free to create our own rules for the eternities, any more than a person is free to create his or her personalized laws for physics.”
“To expect His heavenly inheritance while following a different course than he has outlined is naive,” Elder Renlund continued. “We are to choose our own course in life, but we are not free to choose that outcome that comes from following our own rules, no matter how many times someone says we can.”
Complementary differences
Men and women solve problems best by “working together in a divinely designed, equal partnership,” Sister Wright said. “Most of the responsibilities men and women have in building the kingdom of God are the exact same. There are, conversely, a few intentional differences: men and women are inherently different. Therefore, it would make sense that some of our responsibilities in the kingdom of God would be different.
“Different is not bad. It is simply different. There is power, purpose and immense potential in different.”
Sister Wright said men and women need each other. “Righteous men and women cannot be exalted without one another, and we cannot be exalted without Jesus Christ.”
“The miracle of it all,” she said, “is we can equally partake 100% of the exact same blessings, the greatest of which is eternal life and exaltation, the sacred privilege of returning to live with God the Father and his Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, as eternal families, and most specifically, to live the type of life they live.”
‘Children desperately need both’
Quoting Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Sister Wright taught that “gender in large measure defines who we are, why we are here on the earth and what we are to do and become for divine purposes.”
Elder Bednar said male and female spirits are different, distinctive and complementary. “The unique combination of spiritual, physical, mental and emotional capacities of both males and females are needed to implement the plan of happiness. By divine design, both a man and a woman are needed to bring children into mortality and to provide the best setting for rearing and nurturing of children.”
Sister Wright cited scholar Jenet Jacob Erickson as emphasizing the “substantial body of evidence” that “indicates how mothers and fathers engage with their children using distinctive temperaments and capacities contributing differently but equally to a oneness and unity that appears to be achievable in no other way.
“In many ways, it appears that her motherhood completes and perfects his fatherhood, even as his fatherhood completes and perfects her motherhood in ways that mutually strengthen and bless each other and their children,” Erickson added.
“Our Heavenly Father wants us to need each other. Men need women, and women need men, physically, emotionally and spiritually,” Erickson said. “And prophetic counsel and secular research confirm that children desperately need both. They need both an engaged mother and an engaged father.”
Jesus Christ as the source of family happiness
Jesus Christ is the central figure of God’s plan of salvation, and gives meaning to all the principles outlined in The Family: A Proclamation to the World, Wright said.
“The proclamation is Jesus Christ’s document, for he has affirmed, ‘whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same,’” she added, emphasizing the text’s basis in prophetic revelation.
“Family centered exaltation is only possible because of Jesus Christ, and it is only possible as righteous men and women are united through covenant with God, the Father, and Jesus Christ.”
To truly love one’s family,” Sister Wright added, a person must first be filled with the love that comes from Jesus Christ.
“If our lives and our faith are centered upon Jesus Christ and his restored gospel,” she said quoting President Howard W. Hunter, “nothing can ever go permanently wrong. If our lives are not centered on the Savior and his teachings, no other success can ever be permanently right.”
‘All else pales in comparison’
After citing President M. Russell Ballard’s affirmation that “what matters most is what lasts longest— and our families are for eternity,” Wright emphasized the opportunity and “incalculable privilege” to choose Heavenly Father and Savior, Jesus Christ, and to make and keep sacred covenants with them.
When that happens, she said, “we are also choosing to be part of an eternal family,” which means “choosing to retain the cherished titles of husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter throughout the eternities.”
“Anything this world could offer us pales drastically in comparison,” she said. “The blessing of eternal families is greater than any social stand, cultural trend, world philosophy or physical tendency.
“Do not miss this,” she emphasized, citing President Russell M. Nelson as proclaiming, “No sacrifice is too great to have the blessings of an eternal family.”
Citing a scriptural promise that “all that my father hath shall be given” unto those who receive God’s will, Sister Wright said, “All means all.”
‘We can make an impact’
“It is easy to feel that the environment surrounding the fragmentation of the family is beyond our influence,” Sister Wright said.
“This is not true,” she emphasized. “We can be effectual and make an impact.”
This begins in homes as children are taught to believe in Jesus Christ. “He is the source for healing all that is broken in our lives.”
“We can also be actively involved in the political sphere, voting and supporting leaders and regulations that protect, assist and fortify families,” she said. “We can advocate laws to protect the innocence and safety of children — speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves.
“We can partner with other men and women of faith, compassion and virtue, united together in a cause that aligns with the teachings of Jesus Christ. We can defend and promote morality and the sanctity of the family unit.”