Mortalilty is the battlefield

I kind of like the thought that mortality is a battlefield. I sometimes feel like I'm a warrior & sometimes a prisoner.

"The Church exists to exalt the family. And the family is the fundamental unit of the Church."

--Elder Russell M. Nelson; Ensign, November 2001, page 70.

It doesn't say Elder Nelson's thought is taken from a conference address, but given the issue of the Ensign, it must be. I'd like to read the above thought in context.

This life

is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors. Alma 34:32

"This life is not so much a time for getting and accumulating as it is a time for giving and becoming. Mortality is the battlefield upon which justice and mercy meet. But they need not meet as adversaries, for they are reconciled in the Atonement of Jesus Christ for all who wisely use Today."

--Lance B. Wickman, "Today", Ensign, May 2008, 103–5

And this next one, really strikes a chord with me.

"Just as Jesus used a child in His mortal ministry as an example for the people of the pure love they must and could have to be like Him, He has offered us the family as an example of an ideal setting in which we can learn how to love as He loves. That is because the greatest joys and the greatest sorrows we experience are in family relationships."

--Henry B. Eyring, "Our Perfect Example", Ensign, Nov 2009, 70–73

The greatest joys & sorrows ...