Segullah Journal

I SAT DOWN LATE one night and wrote a list. The week had been a hard one—missed events, kids, chaos, catastrophes. Everything had frustrated me, and the ease with which I became frustrated had infuriated me. Why does letting myself become angry make me more angry than just about anything else? So I made a [...]

During a Sacrament Meeting a few years ago, a man in our ward introduced his talk on “the peace the gospel brings” by reporting a dream in which he fought viciously with the contractor who was remodeling his home at the time. The man went on to explain that his remodel had been going very [...]

Latter-day Saints expect to receive personal revelation while reading the scriptures, but it may come as a surprise while reading the classics. When Marilyn Brown was ten years old she read George Eliot’s novel Adam Bede and felt inspired to ask a question that has guided her life for the last sixty years: “Where is [...]

The hall again? Lugging my shrieking ten-month-old down the aisle, I try not to make eye contact with the endless rows of faces, each of which I know holds one of two expressions—disapproval or pity. I stop at the back corner of the chapel, careful not to block anyone’s view of the speaker, but near [...]

I fell in love in a linoleum-tiled classroom when I was thirteen years old. The combination of crispness and grace, precision and flow enchanted me. I savored the logic and certainty of it all—so far removed from the constant change and chaos of everything else in my life. Though I hesitated to use my voice [...]

Dust scattered in the morning light as my mother fed lengths of blue gingham through her sewing machine. Newly converted to the Church, she used a few scraps and a borrowed pattern to create a bonnet and pinafore for my first 24th of July parade. She finished the final hem, tied the bonnet ribbons under [...]

“And they taste the bitter, that they may know to prize the good” (Moses 6:55). I feel a sense of anticipation as the deacon approaches our pew. My son passes the tray to me, and I slowly bring a piece of bread to my lips. The Savior knows what it’s like to have a broken [...]

I felt her presence at my son Dale’s birth: I lay on the operating table, numb from the waist down, listening to the doctors chat as they performed my C-section. When I opened my eyes I could see the blue sheet raised in front of me, creating a sterile operating area from my belly mound. [...]

I was a miserable teenager. I remember that time as sort of a fevered nightmare, murky and dark and awful. I didn’t act out in the way troubled teenagers typically do, but I was incredibly lonely and angry and sad. I was awkward and emotionally immature, poor with really bad clothes, lacking the personality or [...]

Ropes of pain wrapped around my abdomen. Ever tightening, they underscored shock, fear, and disbelief. Ten weeks remained until I was due to deliver my second child In the crisp September morning, children romped through golden piles of fall leaves and families gathered to celebrate Labor Day. The images of everyday life blurred together as [...]

Whoosh-whoosh, click click click. The sound pulled me from my shallow sleep, and I blinked at the clock on the nightstand. Two a.m. I untangled myself from the covers, searching for my glasses, fumbling in the dark. Whoosh-whoosh, POP! An alarm rang out through the baby monitor I kept in my room. The sound sent [...]

I rebel against tight tanned teenage bodies, hoeing, and cooked mushrooms. I am a woman now. Five children pregnant-birthed-nursed to widen flatten sag me down. I hide under clothes. Usually. But I flaunt my battle scars in the garden. I used to hoe girlishly, rushing the tool, chopping wildly. Now I sit small, swimming suit [...]

I rock my squalling baby and study the orange cookbook’s eating laws for my mother-in-law, who stumbles home from dialysis three times a week too weary to cook, or even eat: No potassium (no bananas). No phosphorus (no tomatoes). No salt (no bacon). We make do. With one hand I shift my baby; with the [...]

Ten days before her stroke my grandma, yoga limber, rested her torso flat, raised her legs in slow scissors, rising upside down. I applauded. She grinned. I showed her my first tae kwon do form: front stance low block, step and punch. She watched me: taut face, jerky motions, scared of my own flesh, awkward, [...]

A tiny tree: glitter-spangled ornaments, blinking lights, perched on her narrow shelf. Machines sustaining life (and fear) sang carols, a choir of beeps. Beneath the tree, her picture: look. This figure swathed in gauze, held by hissing tubes, is nothing like my husband’s sweet-eyed mother. Christmas Day we opened hollow gifts; left the children, unsuspecting, [...]

Don’t tell me about rose-cheeked Arcadian youth gathering daisies on a hillside piping tunes to their cloud-fluffy sheep under the stars. No, these were foul-smelling, lusty men with dirty necks, greasy hands, snorting, arguing, joke-telling, nose-picking men—one wearing stolen sandals (although I admit he felt guilty about it)—gambling on who had the best aim as [...]

My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon. . . . Let this thing be done for me: let me alone [...]