Community Archives

My Maiden Name

February 22, 2026November 10, 2024

By Marilyn Bushman-Carlton

Love and romance (and tradition) meant giving it upfor the privilege of belonging to someone. What girl dressed for her wedding smells death in the white orchid,sees imperfections in the bright diamond? How easily I let it go, boxed it with a school play script,pep club outfit, rogue dreams of college, and baltered willingly into …

Acceptance

February 22, 2026May 22, 2023

By Shari Crall

Acceptance is the key to everything. That’s the mantra I typed into the reminders on my cell phone as I watched two mother-in-laws and my mother take on the last chapters of their lives. One planned carefully ahead as her macular degeneration worsened, knowing the end of driving was coming and choosing an independent to …

Fall 2021 Journal Editorial and Table of Contents

February 22, 2026October 4, 2021

By Jessie Christensen

I spent several months this year recovering from a fire that sent smoke billowing through my house, coating our belongings in a layer of soot and infusing everything with the smoky aroma I used to associate with pleasant memories of summer camping trips. My life was fragmented as I juggled living in a hotel, parenting, …

Summer Journal, Editor’s Introduction

February 22, 2026June 27, 2020

By Sherilyn Stevenson

If ever there were a summer where the sun mocks, it’s this. Entangled in an election year, with race issues in the foreground and virus-impacted to varying degrees, our world seems to contrast images of children in bright suits on a splash pad or chairs rocking on a porch at sunset. And yet, I’m reminded …

Small Things Saved

February 22, 2026April 5, 2019

By Melissa Young

My parents moved to a smaller home last year, and after downsizing their house, have since been in the process of downsizing their stuff. I’ve spent some time with my mom going through boxes, helping her sift the accumulation of several lifetimes (I come from a long line of women who enjoyed collecting pretty things), …

Honorable Mention Poetry: On Bornholm

February 22, 2026May 14, 2018

I look for stipples of myself in white-washed, rough-walled rundkirker, where infant ancestors were baptized in stone fonts next to Viking steles. I listen for echoes of my pulse between the pooled velvet of wheat fields and the Baltic kissing the feet of island pines. Velkommen til Bornholm. Cornflowers twine the sign for Arnager —no …

So much Gold

February 22, 2026July 14, 2017

By Linda Hoffman Kimball

My main occupation for the last year and a half has been spinning straw into gold. There’s no king with room after room of straw and there’s no little imp with an odd name bartering with ill intent. I have just been sorting all of my belongings, culling and tossing the dross and keeping the …

To Toss or to Keep: Haiku on Decluttering

February 22, 2026February 10, 2017

By Linda Hoffman Kimball

Since last March I have been sorting and culling through my belongings. This is primarily because of selling a home and moving after decades of accumulating “stuff.” Systematically trying to see what “sparks joy” also sparks ennui, longing, regret, trepidation and sometimes laughter. It’s enough to drive a person crazy. It’s a stark face off with childhood naivety and the realities of years of life’s complexities. It ties you to generations back in time and makes you wonder about the next generations for whom artifacts pale in comparison to digital records and thumb drives.

It is necessary. It is brutal. It is wrenching.

Guest Post: Sneaky Satan Tree Root

February 22, 2026December 3, 2016

Satan is tricky. And a stinkhead. And a deft manipulator. He can take a good thing and twist it into harm. In fact, it’s because of that old trickster that King Benjamin’s admonition to “watch yourselves”¹ has taken on new meaning to me. I used to think it was a “Watch it!” kind of watching; …

Are There Cookies in Heaven?

February 22, 2026July 2, 2015

By Hildie Westenhaver

I sit next to the bathtub with an auger, trying to get out what is shaping up to be a phenomenal clog. It’s gross enough trying to get my own family’s hair out of the drain, but here I am working on a clog at someone else’s house. It is a tub belonging to a woman in my ward. As I twist the auger, I think to myself, “I’m just earning a few extra rooms in my mansion in Heaven.” I probably should be happy to do service for service’s sake, but no. I’m pretty nice, but not that nice.

The scriptures are full of promises of what will happen if we stay true and good during our lifetimes. It’s quite a popular topic at my house: what Heaven will be like. We’ll live in mansions, of course. Although everyone’s idea of their perfect house is different, so that should make things pretty interesting.

My children like to ask if there will be food in Heaven. I have to imagine so, because eating is so important in this mortal life. But maybe it will be eating just for pleasure’s sake, not for nutition, since our resurrected bodies won’t need that. Or maybe we’ll have something way more pleasurable than eating by that time. Or maybe we just won’t care. But it’s hard to imagine Heaven without warm chocolate chip cookies.