Segullah Journal

FOR YEARS I HAD BEEN HALF-EXPECTING the phone call, but it still brought a jolt when it came: Thelma was in the hospital, expected to die within days. I was Thelma’s visiting teacher. Although she wasn’t a member of the Church, sending sisters to her home was a tradition in our ward. Her home was half [...]

“MELANIE, ELIJAH DIDN’T MAKE IT.” Those were the first words I heard as I drifted back into consciousness. I tried to respond—to tell him that I knew, I understood—but no sound came out. There was something blocking my throat; it hurt. What was it? I tried to reach and pull it out and hands stopped me. [...]

THE STALE, LATE-AFTERNOON AIR hung heavily in the small chapel as the bishop stood at the pulpit reading the usual announcements. The stifling heat, close quarters, and crying babies bred inattention among the congregation—until the bishop suddenly paused and became more serious than usual. “Elizabeth,” he began, “went into premature labor last week.” Only then did [...]

THE PHONE RANG —too early—something was wrong. It was our branch president. He must be mistaken, I thought, as I pulled on my jacket. I left my son eating breakfast with my husband, descended seventeen floors in an elevator, walked quickly through the lobby without waving at the guards, and took my first breath of cold, [...]

He comes with his vast universe of need in a rusted van leaking oil, spewing exhaust his hair and beard sprouted, grown, and gone to seed I ache with caring gape with pity while he’s still safely distant and yearn to open all I have all I am to him my brother Then I hear [...]

What can I do restrained as I am by tiny clutching hands by clamoring demands by the very abundance of my life? And by the not knowing what or how or when And, yes, by the fear that what I finally do will be all wrong. I would give you greenness, laughter, escape an enchanted [...]

MY NEIGHBORS LIVE IN A MESS. Not a literal mess, because their home is repainted every year to ensure cleanliness. Their mess is more emotional; they are playing parents to their three granddaughters whose mother burned their house down—on purpose. Somehow I have become a mother figure to these girls as well. I don’t know firsthand [...]

While on our journey here below, Beneath temptation’s pow’r, Through mists of darkness we must go, In peril ev’ry hour. MY MIND SPUN IN DARKNESS as I tried to comprehend the twilight zone this special day had become. Caitlyn, my eight-year-old daughter, was sitting in fetal position in the dressing room. The meeting should have started [...]

GUILT. An emotion that has driven women to nervous breakdowns for hundreds of years. Women excel at guilt. We grow it, sell it, broker it, horde it for ourselves. We try to give it to other women, often unwittingly, sometimes intentionally; even on occasion, we dole out the guilt with envy and malice. For the most [...]

SHORTLY AFTER OUR HONEYMOON, Jared and I had our first official “misunderstanding” as a married couple. I was hurt by something he had said; and, in my determination to prove why he was at fault, my voice rose a decibel with each vindicating point I made. Sometime during my emotional prosecution, Jared sat me down across [...]

IT WAS QUIET THAT EVENING in the hospice room. Mom had left to go home, and my brother and I were the only ones with Dad. He was dying. Filled with sadness, I tried to be reassuring and supportive of him—just as he had been to me throughout my life. As we talked, he expressed concern [...]

I’M NOT THE EASIEST PERSON TO LIVE WITH. I have lots of good intentions, which I often push too far. Some people might call me downright peculiar—even for a Mormon. I abhor waste. In the summer I collect all the unwanted produce from everyone I know. Yes, including the zucchinis. I grate them and freeze them [...]

OUR FAMILY HAS BEEN TRYING to get to bed earlier. By this, of course, I mean that I, the Mama, want to get to bed earlier, and I want the children to get to bed earlier as well. So I have been trying. The children have been trying too—trying patience, trying sanity, but definitely not trying [...]

BRET AND I BOTH GREW UP CRADLED in the lap of the Wasatch Mountains. Inside the valley lived everyone we loved. Both of our parents, all our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins lived close enough to share Sunday dinner. Instead of valuing the abundance of family, however, we felt cloistered. We were thrilled when employment moved [...]

THE EMERGENCY CALL shattered my peaceful world. An eight-inch rod, the size of a pencil, had dislodged from a piece of machinery with eighty pounds of pressure behind it. The rod penetrated the corner of my husband’s left eye, piercing his brain. Relatives were notified, arriving late that evening. We prayed together during the eight-hour surgery [...]

IT’S HARD TO NAME THE EXACT MOMENT when the frostbitten air of winter finally departs and spring, just-new on the still-gray forsythia buds, arrives. But one day you open the door and you just know, by the smell of new life and wet dirt, the brightness of the sun, the freshness in the breeze, that spring [...]

Have a cup of tea, warm, passing from my hands to yours. Chamomile for peace, the books says. It’s the way yellow flowers gather the sun. You can wash your hair in it too. A cap of sunlight over your head. But this time, just drink. Here’s a cup, An afternoon in a sunny field [...]

birds of intersecting angles, folded triangles, suited to the precision of paper and taking off. here is the simplest bird amenable to the smudgy folds of a child. we mirror make two as i tell her a story. we’ll put on crayon eyes completely anthropomorphic. the only flying is my heart with a prayer in [...]

we all hate to be alone, oh my child. i feel your heart knock against my hand, your shrieks to my shushes, i am here, yours, so sleep in your little bed. you may let go of the world, it is here, it is yours, still, sleep awhile. we all hate to be alone, we [...]

AFTER A LONG seventy-two-hour flight, we landed in Addis Ababa at four o’clock in the morning. Mudgy with fatigue, we hired a taxi and careened through the desolate streets to our guest-house. Our loud knocking roused the elderly guard to the gate, and we made our way through the drive, up the stairs, and to our [...]

Choosing an abortion is probably the most grievous act within the reach of an average young woman. I made that choice, nearly twenty years ago. I was seventeen years old. The windshield of the truck was crusted with frost that winter morning; I shivered through the short drive to the clinic. I can remember many [...]

Charity WHEN I ASKED READERS to send in their insights about charity, I was afraid I might receive “preachy” advice; instead our readers blessed us with insight. Heavenly Father can change our hearts and fill us with love despite the demanding depths of forgiveness or the daily challenge of patience. Our readers explain how—when we are [...]