Segullah Journal

AS I PUSH BACK the tent flap at 6:22 in the morning I look out over the calm of Moon Lake and up at the expanse of the Uinta Mountains, which, though shadowed by clouds, seem to be waiting for the morning sun to break over them. My gaze turns back to the campground and [...]

THE KEVLAR-CLAD GUARD hefting a large automatic weapon took the badges my husband handed him, nodded, and let our minivan full of children pass. We parked the car and approached the tall chain-metal fence, entered, then shuffled through another series of gates. More guards in heavy black gear greeted us and closely inspected my husband’s [...]

Morning’s easy light  Your warm and constant breath  The blue earth, spinning    It is hard to believe in death  Angela Hallstrom thinks sleeping in on a Saturday morning is one of life’s truest pleasures. Why does it have to be so rare? She’s the author of a novel, Bound on Earth, the editor of [...]

HUME LAKE, CALIFORNIA, 1983. For the very first time, our whole family wasn’t there. My brother was on his mission and my mother stayed home, saying she had to work. My father slumped in his lawn chair while my sisters and I tried to occupy ourselves by weaving wildflower crowns, paddling in the waterfalls, and [...]

VOICES FLOAT SOMEWHERE behind me, low pitched and somber. “Thank you for coming . . . Thank you . . . I’ll make sure she knows . . . Their two sons, just over there . . . Thank you . . . Yes, so unexpected . . . terribly sad.” I wear black, of [...]

“YOU KNOW WE’RE totally screwed, don’t you?” my husband said as he flopped backward onto the bed. It was our first night together as a new, blended family. At first, I was stunned. And then I figured maybe he was just joking, as he was prone to do, in an overwhelmed, I-can’t-believe-we-did-this sort of way. [...]

AS A MARRIAGE AND FAMILY therapist and a member of the LDS Church, I have been interested in how Latter-day Saints approach intimacy. In February of 2009 I began a blog, The Mormon Therapist, designed to provide LDS members with an anonymous venue to share personal struggles. I have been inundated with questions and stories [...]

2009 Heather Campbell Personal Essay Contest Winner MY PARENTS DANCED in the kitchen. Dad would come home from work and sweep Mom into a fluid fox-trot on the brown and gold linoleum. The man could dance. He was smooth—transformed from the owlish, bespectacled engineer-high-councilor-family-fix-it-man into, well, Fred Astaire. Their graceful everyday duet enchanted me. Like [...]

Unhinged he looked at her.    Clenched jaw working like a throbbing naked heart  she scrubbed the carrot till its  flesh glistened raw,  stripped of bitter gritty skin,  then slammed it down  took up the knife  and slashed the thing into a dozen startled discs.    “She’ll get her finger,” he thought  (half hoped)  amazed [...]

“HOW MUCH LONGER?” my eight-year-old wants to know. “Sacrament meeting is over when the long hand gets to the eight,” I hiss. Twenty-three minutes—eons. Please let the closing hymn not be “Love at Home.” A beautiful young woman is finishing up her talk. “I want to close with this quote I found on lds.org,” she [...]

NATHAN IS RUNNING LATE. Heart thumping, face flushed, rushing, worried, ears attuned to the sound of the garage door rising. He has the bed he’s built fitted together tight and the mattress on, so the room isn’t a complete mess, but he has shoved the old metal frame out into the hall, and the sheets [...]

You can tell a lot about people from the books on their shelves. On my husband’s shelf is Today I Will Nourish My Inner Martyr. He gave the book out one year for Christmas to our extended family so we could understand him better. Not that that is his only book. He also has a [...]

SEVERAL MONTHS AGO I emailed Louise Plummer to see if I could interview her and her husband, Tom, for our “Inside and Outside Marriage” issue. “Sure,” she responded, “but I’ll tell you right now, I’m not sure how much truth you’ll get out of us.” I was intrigued, because Tom and Louise have made a [...]

The Difficult Part Let the fragments of love be reassembled in you. Only then will you have true courage. –Hayden Carruth WE HAVE A PAINTING in the hallway to our bedroom. It’s called Lovers Running and shows a man and a woman dressed in white on a green hillside, holding hands, and running in their [...]

this day in bleak midwinter. gray sky wraps earth with angel sleeves and snow drops heavily onto soot singed drifts. we are tired, you and I. a train mourns distance. twilight seeps into tree bones— obscures the falling sky. the kitchen waits unswept and cold. you hold me close. we burrow into blankets like two [...]

SOMETIMES I LOOK AT MY HUSBAND and I think about him dying. I really don’t want to think about such a thing, but the thought crosses my mind a few times a week. I can be driving to the grocery store when I pass a tree with a big yellow ribbon tied around its trunk, and [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Poetry Contest 2nd Place Winner (to my husband, on the 22nd anniversary of our December marriage in the Manti temple) We sail the vein: Perforated, gray southbound highway Down From dawn’s perch We approach, Splaying this languid stage of sagebrush       In two Vast contours, undulating, Old rocky chronology seeping left to right, [...]

I walked into the room where you were; You looked so peaceful, resting there. So natural, like you’d looked many times over the two decades I’d watched you sleep. I leaned over and kissed your lips still warm, But not reciprocating now. I smoothed your snow-white hair with my hand. By small measure my heart [...]

There comes that moment When I realize It’s over. I’ve tried to tell myself He still cares, Still loves me, That he just needs a break, Some time away For everything to be normal again. I know he must feel the same Somewhere in his heart, He made the same vows After all We all [...]

I WRITE TO HONOR FEISTY MARRIAGES. “Honor” might be a bit strong, but let us get it straight from the beginning: a zesty relationship is the highlight of my life. I understand that not everyone feels the same, such as the three friends who were out to dinner with me last week at P.F. Chang’s. We [...]

I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT OF MYSELF as strong, self–sufficient and steadfast. Yet the challenges and changes of life, at times, mock my rock of Gibraltar self–assessment. Rather, I often seem to more closely resemble Sister Young’s Jell–O salad—dripping, wiggling and sometimes melting. Adolescence is a time of evolution and turmoil for many. In high school I was [...]