Last week, I offered some thoughts on our obligation as (relatively) wealthy, educated women to those less fortunate. I wanted to make the point that we can effect change no matter our role—mother, accountant, bus driver, and so on—if we obey the Lord’s commandments in our daily work and practice charity with compassion and prudence. I wanted to share an interview with a woman who has done and is doing what she can for causes she cares about.

Claire, could you give me some background about yourself and your work?
Continue reading Interview with Claire Lama →

Sometimes I get a lump in my throat when I’m with my children. I look at their chubby limbs and am fortunate that my family has never known hunger; I hold them as they cry over a skinned knee and feel grateful they’ve never felt worse; I talk through a playground fight, thinking how lucky we are to live without fear of oppression.

Most women reading this blog are part of the global and historical fraction of women with access to education, free speech, first-world medical care, and enfranchisement. It’s good to be a Western, 21st century woman and mother.

A few days ago, I scrolled through images of Syrian refugees clutching children, babies, some of them, as they made the dangerous, weary way to a better life. They are helpless, desperate, and vulnerable. I sometimes wonder how I would respond to the hardships so many women have faced: childbearing and illness before modern medicine, war on my doorstep, oppression, hunger, and so on.
Continue reading Selling All We Have →

Since the beginning of time people have been telling stories. They have been passed down the generations in song, story, image and memory. We have millions of stories that are told everyday. History itself is one long story about the human race. Stories are our memories, and our past. They can teach, express, and question life in ways that we couldn’t do without them. I have always loved stories, and of course grew up hearing all the classic fairytales.

In the modern world we like to take stories like the old classics and turn them into new and exciting things. We ask questions like, “What if Snow White befriends the Huntsman?” and “What if Alice wasn’t dreaming?” and then create new stories from the old ground work. But what if there is an underlying story that we missed in all the old fairytales?
Continue reading The Truth in the Tower →

…Is it true?? Are there really no coincidences? I think it is true, hard though it is to fathom. I think there’s a fine line between ‘pre-destination’ – the notion that God determines our fate, that we have no say in the matter – and ‘free will’ – that we control our destinies, we are not just pawns in a big chess game of life and the universe. I believe that there really are no coincidences. I chalk this up as something our puny little mortal brains just can’t grasp, and I’m ok with that.
Continue reading No Coincidences →