Essays

My first experience inside the temple was sealed to my family at six years old. My father had been recently baptized, and my family was excited to be sealed in the temple. I remember feeling the Spirit and recognizing the importance of being inside the temple walls. It was a special day for my family, and the Spirit left an impression on my heart of a feeling of home and a desire to return. Throughout the rest of my childhood and my teenage years, I eagerly look forward to th

In 2014, I ventured into the world of family history and quickly became passionate about seeking out my ancestors and performing their temple ordinances. Attending the temple became increasingly meaningful as I spent time working on behalf of my own family, people I had come to know and love through the process of researching their lives and families.

Creation has turned into being one of the most important aspects of my life. Which, frankly, is interesting as it took quite a detour.

It was June of 2012, and scripture study hadn’t been a priority of mine for many, many months, sad to say. An upcoming cruise industry conference in New York City, to be followed by visits to family and friends meant that I’d be away from my home and family in Nova Scotia for a little while. Pre-travel anxiety combined with some guilt moved me to try to feel the Spirit through one of favourite books, Jesus and the World of the New Testament by Huntsman, Holzapfel, and Wayme

Last year when we were contemplating uprooting our family from Texas and moving back to Utah, I was seeking an answer from the Lord. Our lives were good in Houston. My husband and I had excellent jobs, a home and neighborhood we loved, and many friends who had become like family. All three of our kids had all been born in Texas, and that was all they had ever known. The thought of leaving such familiarity and goodness was unnerving and scary, but we had always had the hope of

I had been pondering about joy for a couple of weeks when it greeted me unexpectedly in a crowded hallway one morning. It quickened me with wonder, a sense of flying on the wings of grace while people hurried past. In the hours that followed, I found myself rising to the vibration of the joyful energy within me, ready to shed unhelpful habits and embrace a higher way.

When I was twenty-one, the day before I entered the MTC, I drove out to Manti, Utah with my parents. I had wanted to attend the temple again with them before I left, and we all decided that the Manti temple would make for a memorable trip, not the least because it was the place where my parents had been sealed twenty-five years earlier.

The film crew finished arranging the cameras on my husband who was sitting on a barstool in the middle of our front room. I watched as their filtered lights cast a halo around his head. I had already finished my interview with the director earlier that day. We were part of a documentary about people like me who suffered from a terrible syndrome caused by prescribed tranquilizers.

There are times when I consider moving along this journey in private, working it out quietly in my own head and keeping it all to myself and then trying to move on and leave the past in the past. But when I consider this option, I see your face. You stare me down with your sadness, your confusion, and your sense of isolation. You need answers.

He had the high and holy calling of prophesying Jerusalem’s destruction. He didn’t get to make the standard cry of repentance, however. Instead, God asked him to perform a series of unpleasant symbolic gestures to illustrate the Israelites’ impending fate. One of these tasks inspired the health-food staple, “Ezekiel bread.”

“I open at the close.” I remember being 12 years old and reading that in a Harry Potter book. When I read it, it felt pretty profound to my 12-year-old brain but the funny thing is that through my teenage years and adult years the Spirit has used that phrase to communicate peace and love through some of the hardest experiences of my life.

But, the truth is, family has been one of the most glorious parts of my life and also the toughest. I have no idea how to write an essay on what someone else’s experience might be with family. Experiences are wildly different. So, for this, I decided to lay down some truths. Not capital T Truth but more like truth-for-me truth. Because I feel in speaking truth, it helps to make us realize we can live and feel and experience authentically. That there is no one way a family sho

On February 11, 2020, my family drove Rachel, my oldest daughter, to the airport here in Madison, Wisconsin. People streamed past us in the busy airport as we hugged her and said our goodbyes. We told each other it would be two birthdays and one Christmas—18 months—until we saw her again. She was tearful but excited as she boarded her plane to fly to the Mexico City MTC, ready to focus on studying both the gospel and Spanish as she prepared to teach and serve people in Washin

Forty-one years ago I was in my final year at the University of Otago in New Zealand when my evening was interrupted by two missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—the first two members of the church I had ever met. I listened to them as they bore witness of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. They then left me with a copy of the book with specific passages marked out for me to read, promising to return in two days’ time to take me to a “special di

“Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ . . . ”[1] So Paul begins almost all his letters to the scattered Christian converts from Galatia to Rome. How different from the way I greet people! His words are so much kinder than our English, “hello,” which is really just an etymological cousin of the word “holler” — a modified shout for attention. Paul’s greeting is instead an acknowledgment of love.

There’s a scripture you’ve probably heard referenced before. It’s in D&C 123:16 and it goes like this, “You know, brethren, that a very large ship is benefited very much by a very small helm.” What do you think of when you hear that scripture? Maybe like me, you think of the verse in Alma 37 that says “by small and simple things are great things brought to pass,” and that would be an appropriate interpretation. It’s true, those small and simple things, the Sunday school answe

My journey to gaining a testimony of the Book of Mormon has been a roller coaster of fear, stubbornness, backbreaking trials, and ultimate peace and direction, all at a young age. I grew up in the church, yet from an early age my struggle with mental illness and subsequent isolation, loneliness, and fear led me to having a hard time knowing what was true and believing my life had value. I strayed from praying and grew more and more skeptical. In middle school, I went from bei

Aurelia Spencer Rogers was not impressed with the boys in her recently established community of Farmington, Utah. Words like “hoodlum” and “carelessness in the extreme, not only in regard to religion, but also to morality” were thrown around. She was sympathetic – she understood that after all the losses that occurred on the path to Zion and the hard work involved in establishing a new community, parents were exhausted and barely scraping by. But she felt the children’s needs

Throughout my life I have read from this book many times. This book is about families. The stories of immigrant families. Families fleeing war, death threats, slavery, and wanting a refuge and a better life for their children. Families that love each other, families that split apart. Families that are separated for centuries and then find each other again. It’s about culture, heritage, and genealogy. It’s a book about the Americas, but mostly it is a book about Jesus Christ.

For my entire life, I would say that one of my core identities has been “I am a believer.” As a result, I have been called naive, brainwashed, stupid, and more. But, for me, there is just no doubt that my Father and Mother in Heaven exist, that They love me, and that They are all powerful and benevolent. So . . . where’s the problem?