This is the third in a series of posts about women’s bodies and consecration. Part I was about pregnancy, and part II about single sisterhood. 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 of Segullah. Comments posted may be quoted in the article. (I will use first names only, or quote anonymously.)
I stared at the stain, not wanting to believe what I was seeing. Blood. Bright red. And I was seven weeks’ pregnant.
In an instant I knew what was happening: miscarriage. My first. After six live births, I was finally facing the terrible loss that one in four pregnant women suffer.
I like the feel of my baby’s tummy against mine as he nurses. He reaches up and grabs my nose, or sometimes bats at my cheek over and over. Occasionally he’ll fall asleep nursing: his little body grows heavy, and he dozes and eats at the same time. It’s good to hold him and rock, just rock.
As his mother, I hold him in other ways, too. Yesterday I held him down on the doctor’s table as the nurse sewed a stitch in his eyelid.
The Seventh Ward Relief Society presidency argued long and soft whether Janie Goodmansen deserved to have the sisters bring her family meals. It seems that precedent was vague— no one was sure if “boob job” qualified as a legitimate call for aid. Janie herself had never asked for help— a fault they found it harder …
IT WAS QUIET THAT EVENING in the hospice room. Mom had left to go home, and my brother and I were the only ones with Dad. He was dying. Filled with sadness, I tried to be reassuring and supportive of him—just as he had been to me throughout my life. As we talked, he expressed concern …
THE PHONE RANG —too early—something was wrong. It was our branch president. He must be mistaken, I thought, as I pulled on my jacket. I left my son eating breakfast with my husband, descended seventeen floors in an elevator, walked quickly through the lobby without waving at the guards, and took my first breath of cold, …
It is possible for Christ to be born in men’s lives, and when such an experience happens, that man is “in Christ”—Christ is “formed” in him . . . [Then Christ] is not just a general truth or a fact in history . . . [but a] moving, dynamic, vitalizing force [in his life]. –President Howard W. Hunter [1] IT …
Edited by Carol Cornwall Madsen and Cherry B. Silver for the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for LDS History Published by Brigham Young University, 2005 Purchase price $19.95 A NEW PUBLICATION from the Smith Institute for LDS History chronicles the success of Latter Day Saint women in maintaining faithfulness to the gospel while responding to social …
Introducing Segullah, Part III THE SOUND OF THE TELEPHONE awakened me from a sound sleep. My husband leaned over the nightstand to answer. Suddenly on edge, I mentally sorted the possible reasons for a phone call so early in the morning. Had there been an injury or an illness in the family? An emergency at Don’s job? Did …
Introducing Segullah, Part I And Eve . . . was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression, we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient. (Moses 5:11) I OFTEN PRAY WHILE DRIVING. Usually I’m discreet about it: …
