Segullah

Mormon women blogging about the peculiar and the treasured

Patriarchal Blessing

In a couple of weeks my youngest daughter will receive her patriarchal blessing. She’s only thirteen, but for six months now she has been pestering me and my husband about getting her blessing. At first I brushed her off, thinking she wouldn’t be able to understand the blessing’s significance at such a young age, and [...]

“Is Not This the Fast that I Have Chosen?”

Like most of you, I’m guessing, I haven’t always understood or relished the law of the fast. On Fast Sundays as a young girl I hated that hollow, gnawing feeling in my stomach and I passed the time in Sunday school fantasizing about my favorite treats—custard tarts, vanilla slices, lamingtons—always resolving to buy two of [...]

Coming Clean

Over the years I’ve watched my husband try a myriad of diets: the Beach diet, the Fat-Flush diet, low-carb/high-fat diets, low-fat/low-carb diets, a raw vegetarian diet that gave him bad breath for weeks (all that garlic, all those weird spices–ughh), even the infamous lemonade diet (lemon juice mixed with maple syrup and cayenne pepper, consumed [...]

Sunrise, Sunset or Where Did the Summer Go?

This morning my children will don their new school clothes and, toting new backpacks stuffed with sharpened pencils and blank notebooks, they’ll head out the door for the first day of school. And, just like that, summer vacation will be over. Like me, you may be wondering where the summer went. I always start summer [...]

Reap What You Sow

One of my earliest memories is sitting in the garden at twilight, plucking sugar peas off the vine. Each pod was a treasure, splitting open to reveal a row of sweet peas that I ate one after the other. In the bright morning we picked raspberries (one for the bowl, one for me) and I [...]

Parenting and Happiness

Twenty-one years ago I wrote the following in my daughter’s baby journal: “It’s a lovely morning—sunny, yet hazy in the hills with wisps of fog. The baby and I have had a pleasant morning playing downstairs. She squealed and rocked on her hands and knees as I played her Raffi tape. Then I fed her [...]

Gay and/or Mormon: A Storyteller’s Perspective

Jonathan Langford (www.langfordwriter.com) is a freelance writer and editor who lives in western Wisconsin. His first novel, No Going Back, a 2009 Whitney Award finalist for best general fiction by an LDS author, describes a Mormon teenage boy’s struggle to remain faithful despite his homosexual feelings. Langford is also coauthor of the Latter-day Saint Family [...]

Post-Christmas Reflections

The new clothes and gadgets have all been put away (at least they’ve been moved up to the children’s rooms), wrapping paper and boxes are crammed in the recycling bin, and the sugar cookies and coconut bread and chocolates and the leftovers from Christmas Day have been eaten. After a whirlwind month of decorating and [...]

So, What else do you “do”?

This if for my friend who recently wrote me an email about her discouragement. She has a three-year-old and a new baby. Someone asked her the other day, “So, what do you do besides keep 2 children alive?” They laughed a bit, but the girl waited for an answer and my friend stood there thinking, [...]

Slow Down

In the summer of 1999 my husband discovered that his business partner had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars of company money and, worse, had double collateralized on a significant business loan and line of credit in my husband’s name. As the whole sordid mess came to light and the bank demanded immediate repayment of [...]

Good-Bye

Two days ago I sat in Primary and watched as my youngest child—my baby—received her Faith in God Award and stood at the front of the room, smiling, braces flashing, as the other Primary children sang, “If you’ll miss her and you know it, wave good-bye. If you’ll miss her and you know it, wave [...]

Splendid Isolation on Hinchinbrook

Day One “Welcome to Splendid Isolation,” says the large wooden sign posted over the dock. As our boat slows to a stop, I get my first up-close look at Hinchinbrook, the island just a couple of miles away from the Great Barrier Reef where my husband, our four children, and I will be spending the [...]

Teenage Dating–An Oxymoron?

Those of you who have teens and subscribe to the New Era know that this month’s issue is devoted entirely to teenage dating. When I handed the magazine to my eighteen-year-old son, he rolled his eyes and said, “Teenage dating—now that’s an oxymoron.” First, I was impressed that he used the word “oxymoron.” Then, I [...]

“Let’s Give It Up For Wayne!”

Several weeks ago I found myself standing in front of a crowded auditorium, speaking to hundreds of eager high school jazz players who had come to hear Wayne Bergeron, a Grammy-award-winning jazz trumpet player, instruct them. It was my job to introduce Wayne and to “pump up” the audience. “You know that I’m just a [...]

Sisterly Love

When I was a little girl I thought one of the happiest sounds I’d ever heard was my mother laughing with her six sisters. They’d stand around my grandmother’s kitchen, washing the dishes and putting away the Christmas dinner leftovers, laughing so loudly they sounded like the kookaburras that cackled outside my window every morning. [...]

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