Segullah

Mormon women blogging about the peculiar and the treasured

Marriage Has Many Pains

but celibacy has no pleasures.

In the Time of the Butterflies

I first met the Mirabal sisters in a book club.   I found them in the pages of Julie Alvarez’s book _In the Time of the Butterflies_.  It’s true that Alvarez took some liberties with their story: she added characters, changed certain events, and gave the sister’s distinct voices that may or may not accurately reflect who [...]

You can’t teach an old dog…

cjane is out of town this week. I’m doing a poor job filling in, but I’ll try… OK, I sometimes think I’m too old to do new tricks. I see myself settling quite nicely into habits and routines — it doesn’t really matter if they’re good for me or not. I’m settling in, folks. I’m [...]

Of Flesh and Blood, of Faith

Will we ever completely fathom the miracle that is the body? Do we comprehend the extent of wonders that happen just beneath our skin by systems we cannot see but trust are there? Unless we go underwater, we breathe with little notice; unless we put two fingers to our neck to catch a quickening pulse, [...]

A Smelly Bus Ride and a Prophet’s Voice

At two a.m. my companion and I knocked on the mission nurse’s door. “You made it!”she said. She hugged us both as we stumbled in, lugging our baggage. Inside her apartment mattresses lined the floor, with suitcases squeezed in between: all thirty sister missionaries in our mission would be crammed inside this one apartment

This Mortal Coil

My husband and I were talking one night about a young woman in our ward that had her baby taken away because of her living conditions (she claimed she couldn’t keep house because of her diabetes). After some conversation about it, I said, “It must break Heavenly Father’s heart to send those spirits into situations [...]

And Virtually No Labor Pains

Christopher took a life assessment last night. It basically asked him about what he values and the success of his career. Late last night as we were preparing for bed he described to me the assessment and we discussed some of his answers. The first page asked about what he valued. There were eighteen statements [...]

Gifts

Kathy Soper is one famous lady amongst our hardworking, housewiferly, and often faceless editorial board here at Segullah. And not for anything other than being the quickest return-emailer EVER. But wait. There’s more. To read about some of Kathy’s other feats, click here. Deseret News reporter Carma Wadley visits Kathy’s home and talks to her [...]

From Within

Yesterday during Sunday school we read some of the parables in Matthew 25. The teacher asked for volunteers to read different parts of each story. I volunteered to be a servant in the parable of the talents and held out my hands to accept five Hershey’s kisses that represented talents from the Lord. In the [...]

Things Fall Apart

“Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.”—-Chinua Achebe, “Things Fall Apart” I have spent many years running away from the abnormalities of my family. Let’s just say that we didn’t fit the [...]

A Living Sacrifice, part IV: Infertility

This is the fourth in a series of posts about women’s bodies and consecration. Part I was about pregnancy, part II about single sisterhood, and part III about miscarriage. I am using the information gathered in these posts to write an article called “A Living Sacrifice,” which will be published in the fall/winter 2007 issue [...]

Consider a Bundle of Birdies

The point of this post is to tell you not to worry. Don’t worry about ___________. (Fill in the blank!) Because it will all work out. I know, because it always does. I mean it always does. Even when—especially when– it doesn’t look like it’s going to. It did today.

Love Heals

Last winter in the wake of a string of heartbreaking events in my family, I found myself in an old familiar position: doubled over with stomach pain, sleepless, sometimes vomiting because my insides were wound up so tight.

Knowing Father

When my dad tells me he loves me, I know that he truly loves me. I can see it in his blue eyes and how they squint just so, tearing up. Sure, there were times I also saw disappointment or anger cloud those eyes, but first and foremost I knew love, and so the subsequent [...]

Condoms Are Sexy

Or at least that’s what middle school students are now learning, according to this article from Meridian.

Celebrating the Celibate

A couple years ago my husband and I invited a friend of mine from Montreal over for dinner. She had come to BYU for the summer with a ward friend, John, who was also doing an internship at BYU. I asked my friend if John wanted to come to dinner as well. “No, he doesn’t [...]

The Dancer and the Dance

My daughter tells me the morning of her dance recital that she doesn’t want to go. “I’m not going to dance for the mommies and daddies because I already did,” she says. She’s watching me to see my reaction. “I’ve never seen all your dances,” I tell her. “I always have to leave in the [...]

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