Segullah

Mormon women blogging about the peculiar and the treasured

Juxtapose

A slide show through my December would consist of a mad-fast jumble of contrasts. Twenty crazed minutes mid-Saturday inside a crowded Walmart in Portland, Oregon, accompanied by overloud, carnival-toned Christmas songs. A quiet, tearful hour or two curled up next to my frail and ailing–to be honest, dying–95-year-old grandmother. Faces against windows, pressed closer to [...]

This Time Next Year

This evening, I’m pulling down all the Christmas decorations. Our baby Christmas tree will be casually folded then cheerfully shoved until it (mostly) fits in the box it came in. The decorations will be jiggled carefully into their special container, the cards decking our windows put in the recycling bin, and the last of the [...]

Family Photo

Two weeks ago I rushed my family out of bed on a Saturday morning. We shoveled down some toast, threw on the clothes I had laid out, tamed hair and piled into the car, hurrying to make it to our favorite park before the sun was completely up in the sky. We pulled into the [...]

Jesus is Here

I am sixteen years old.  It’s Christmas time–December 23rd, to be precise.   I am in the car with my boyfriend, Matt, driving to the Santa Rosa stake center. I’m getting baptized tonight. I can’t stop smiling. I feel enveloped in a bubble of peace as deep as that of the first Christmas night. I’m getting baptized tonight! When we [...]

Mr. Krueger and Me

A few Sundays ago I was feeling somewhat desperate in my attempts to entertain three small children in a reverent manner, when I remembered my collection of free Church DVDS and decided to watch Mr. Krueger’s Christmas. If you haven’t seen it before, the short film tells the story of Mr. Krueger, an elderly man [...]

Secret Alms

The last Sunday in November, a woman, new to our ward, shared this story in our sacrament meeting. I retell it with her permission. When she was eight years old, her single mother (age thirty) moved their young family from California to Salt Lake City. It was late autumn and the weatherman was predicting a [...]

Song of the Heart

When I was a child, there was a family in our neighborhood who always came caroling on Christmas Eve. They’d sing for us and give us a perfectly round (baked in a soup can) loaf of banana bread, frosted with buttercream frosting and topped with a sprig of holly. Christmas had arrived. As a teenager, [...]

Pass Along Princess

Today’s guest post comes from Julia M.L. Whitehead, who has used writing as life’s therapy ever since she popped her first pimple and didn’t make cuts for the junior high cheer squad, when she joined Journalism instead! High school English from a poetry pusher helped sprout a hobby that still sees the occasional blossom. With [...]

NYC Marathon: A Story of Finishing and New Beginnings

First weekend in November is a big deal for Marathoners from all over the world. It’s the ING New York City Marathon. After living in the city for a couple of years, becoming a runner, undertaking a marathon elsewhere and loving it, I decided I wanted to be a part of one of the biggest [...]

The Gift of Receiving

We are thick in the season of giving. Retail merriment may jing-jing-jangle our nerves, but many of us bask in thinking about our giftees and what might bring them joy. This is progress from our less-enlightened “gimme” days. Wonderful! We are learning to be good gift givers. The flip side of this is that this [...]

Stupid Skinny Jeans

By now, you’ve heard more than enough about the BYU-Idaho skinny jeans scandal. I have just a bit more to add, but a little story for you first: Salt-of-the-earth isn’t adequate to describe my father-in law. At fifteen he emigrated from East Germany to the United States with his sixteen year old brother as his [...]

Tis the Season

And no, I’m not talking about Christmas. I’m talking instead about the season of illness, of cold, flu, strep, croup, and all the other contagions that seem to prey on the unwilling. Our first real sign that something was wrong came in the middle of the night. My daughter woke up crying that she coldn’t [...]

Dealbreakers

While it’s the time of year to write about families, Christmas presents, travel, and (oh yeah) the birth of Jesus, I’ve been up to my elbows in wrapping presents all weekend, so I need a break from talking or even thinking about Christmas. Instead, perhaps inspired by my weekend of wrapping while listening to books [...]

It’s Contest Time!

We get mighty excited here at Segullah as the new year approaches. Why? Because December 31st is the deadline for entering our annual contests and beginning January 1st, we get to dig in to your submitted entries, searching for that winning gem. It is always a treat for us to read your work  and we have long [...]

greedy

The other day I asked my cute neighbor, “So what do you want for Christmas?” “Hmm, not really anything,” he replied, “I already have a lot.” Eleven-year-old Isaac isn’t a kid with a cell phone, an iPad or a TV in his room, but he is well-clothed, well-fed and adored by his parents. His dad [...]

Losing it: Exhibit A

I admit it. December is a month that finds me particularly scattered, more so than usual. In some ways I love the bustle and bounty. Other times I reach my limit of juggling the holiday doings on top of the usual activities of life. Even when we resolve to keep it simple, we still have [...]

Free Fall

We were in Mexico. We wore swimsuits only and climbed a winding path holding hands and laughing. It was warm and thick humidity hung in the air around us, a third character in the vignette. We were giddy and nervous and excited, because we were almost there: the edge of a cliff over water. The [...]

IQ- Inspiration quotient

This fall was a roller coaster of a fall. Still, somehow in the blur of it all something has stood out to me. It wasn’t something new, but it was something I am learning to understand in deeper ways. I have noticed the great blessing and energy I derive from people who influence and inspire [...]

A Good Book for Christmas

One of my favorite gifts to give (and get) at Christmastime is a good book. Although I realize that the more organized among us have already finished their Christmas shopping, I’m guessing some of you are like me and still have some holiday scrambling to do. I’m hoping that I can share some of my [...]

Curing Christmas Craziness

December 1st: to me it’s the day that the Christmas season really gets under way. Today I am regretting buying the Advent Calendar with all sorts of little cubbies that require filling every year. Why didn’t I just stick with the chocolate advent calendars? They’re so easy! My social calendar is already filling up with [...]

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