Segullah Journal

GOD’S COUNTRY. That’s what my husband’s grandmother calls this land of rolling fields and sprawling cities. She grew up forty-five minutes from the University of Notre Dame, and when she heard Bryan had decided to come here for his PhD, she was thrilled. “You’ll absolutely love it there,” she told us. “That’s God’s country.” When it [...]

I SHIFTED MY WEIGHT on the pew and sighed as the sacrament meeting speaker stood to begin his talk. Seven months pregnant, I was swollen and sore, big-bellied, and exhausted from the constant demands of my five young children who were crawling on and off my nearly nonexistent lap, whispering (or not) in my ear, [...]

MY BREASTS ACHED WITH THE TENDERNESS of sudden milk, and my first baby—my Chloe—stirred in my arms. Our bishop was over for a visit, and I felt tired. And frazzled. And overwhelmed by unfamiliar motherhood. He knew this and reassured me with a pat on the shoulder that he would hold off in giving me [...]

I STARE IN FRUSTRATION at the garage’s concrete expanse—as if the car could somehow be hiding behind the tools and clutter. He said he’d be home in ten minutes! The mental shout echoes through my head as I glare, once more, at the empty garage. Fuming, I shut the door to find the phone. I [...]

“ . . . and the APs will put your passport in the safe.” My first evening in the mission home, I was introduced to so many new rules, inspirational thoughts, pieces of advice, and types of raw fish that I hardly heard this. In fact, by the time I left for the chilly reaches [...]

AN ENORMOUS PLATE OF RICE sat in front of me, a mountain of rice, rice mixed with peas, an unidentifiable meat, and . . . ants? Yes, ants, the ants that marched many by many in Guayaquil, Ecuador. My food had already been blessed, but I blessed it again, fervently: ”Heavenly Father, I’m a missionary [...]

They cut desire into short lengths And fed it to the hungry fires of courage. Long after, when the flames died, Molten gold gleamed in the ashes; They gathered it into bruised palms And handed it to their children And their children’s children.1 “This is what the Lord has been preparing you for,” said the [...]

SOMETIMES I FANTASIZE about being Catholic. I don’t understand much about Catholic theology, but I love the mystique that shrouds their traditions—the flickering candles, the rosary beads, and the Gregorian chants. I also seem to have a natural affinity for sackcloth and ashes. Sacrifice and poverty don’t scare me. In fact, I bet I would [...]

Harvest When I was younger and could run and not be weary, I would head for the hills and jog upward and onward, leaving the valley behind. My path often wound to an overgrown and forgotten back road connecting two otherwise separate neighborhoods. One cool, summer morning as I took this shortcut, I stopped in [...]

Dawn cracks open the shell of night, leaks light into far corners of hard hearts, reveals hope waiting like a trusting child. The earth exhales, blows fog and darkness back into the black night, inhales new air, faith as fresh as rain in summer. I memorize the map of stars disappearing overhead. They remain in [...]

Sister Ilis Grant echoes Exodus clear eyes teaching mine. Her humble tongue repeats, stumbles, blesses. Blessings echo, overlap. I circle round, emerge, tasting glory, clothed in grace. Emily is an assistant editor of Segullah.

Whistling, rustling, crackling sounds, frost-hardened snow of the heaven: Eskimos believe torches guide spirits journeying to the next life. Dark, far away, I see the sky open. A haze settles into a glow, gradually widening, striping the earth. Twisting contortions of mysterious light surround me. Fissures of red, white, gold, shine yellow, like glowing irons [...]

I would basket the fruit for you, from hidden houses behind leaves and far boughs. High on a tripod ladder, I reach, and catalogue the fruit with ants and roots and the mountain behind, note the girth of the trunk and the aguapunctual movement of water. You drift like clouds, and boughs that bend under [...]

pressed for the sleeping and eating, care of the young and the sleeping and eating, duties of shelter, to keep it clean and warm and lit and locked and live, and all the wordless aspects of errands and urgencies, without details, lacking words, and the sleeping and eating and no time. no time to hold [...]

cold crisp sky grey, grey concrete In other seasons, when the grass is still bright green and the trees’ colors command attention and the flowers roll out of the ground, the concrete grey doesn”t seem so prominent, doesn’t shout so loud. But here, from behind these tinted windows, the concrete is the same shade of [...]

Sacrifice was numbered in sheep subtracted from flocks. First, young, flawless taken from the ewe’s warmth to altar of rocks, then burned: amber, orange, red. Babies fall through me, birthed to return straight to heaven. My first sucks a sliver-sized thumb and inhales one last breath. My second—bigger, sturdier, passes even faster than his brother. [...]

I remember sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen Surrounded by the warmth of the wood furnace, stoked hot Against the four-foot drifts of the Snake River Plain outside. She told me how beautiful I was, Her creased hands against my cheeks. She talked about the beauty of youth that doesn’t need Lipstick and cream blushers. Her [...]

He’s here again— it must be thirty lambings since last I saw Him— a mewling, just-arrived babe folded in the protection of His mother’s arms— the night my husband urged me, though nearing my own confinement, to come and see. Angels, he said as we hurried beneath the stars, came with wondrous news of a [...]

18 Months Reviewed by Emily Milner 18 Months, edited by Melissa Baird Carpenter Published by Millennial Press, 2007 softcover, 171 pages ISBN 978-1-932597-46-2 $12.95 ONLY TWO PARAGRAPHS INTO READING Amy Ward McLaughin’s “The Butterfly,” from 18 Months, and I was a greenie again in Ecuador: “Bugs hovered and waded through the soupy air, and our [...]