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Peace, Be Still

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  Who Is the Accuser? The other day I woke up already losing. Even before I moved, I could feel the storm gathering deep within my body, the kind that doesn't just visit but seizes the entire day and threatens to wreck everything in its path. Every nerve screamed in protest. The intensity was such that I broke into a sweat, waves of nausea rising as I became trapped in a vicious cycle: the fear of vomiting only heightened the pressure in my head and neck, which in turn sharpened the pain further. Layered upon this physical torment came a crushing anxiety that wrapped itself around my chest. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do” I turned to my familiar protocol with a kind of desperate discipline: a high dose of Excedrin powder, a long hot shower that lasted until the water ran cold, ice packs pressed against my skin until they melted, and the Cefaly electrode humming on my forehead while healing tones played softly in the background. I moved through these ste...
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In The Iris Of The Storm (Spoken Word / Poetry)

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In The Iris Of The Storm  There’s this live performance ~  Iris , Goo Goo Dolls, their hometown, Buffalo, 2004 ~ July Fourth. A free show. Tens of thousands. And right in the middle of it ~ the sky just opens up . No cover. No break. No “let’s wait it out” Rain comes down in sheets - equipment frying, band soaked, crowd melting into the music ~ but they don't leave. They just…. keep going. Johnny Rzeznik’s voice slicing through the downpour like steel wrapped in silk, the lights catching every drop of water like starlight falling the wrong way. And somehow, in that chaos, the song feels realer than it ever did on the radio. That image - it’s been living in my chest lately. Like it’s trying to tell me something about what that song’s really saying Vulnerability ~ unedited. Exposure ~ with no guarantee. “I just want you to know who I am.” That’s not just a lyric. That’s a dare. That’s a confession. That’s t...
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Somebody Save Me

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When We Stop Pretending There are moments in life when the soul runs out of ways to manage itself. The usual strategies no longer work. The explanations feel thin. The image we have maintained (even the image we've maintained before God) begins to crack. What rises in that moment is rarely polished. It's not usually a tidy prayer or a carefully reasoned confession. It's more often a cry. A plea. A reaching outward from the point where self sufficiency fails. Scriptures are remarkably honest about where repentance often begins. It doesn't begin in poise or impressive spirituality. It begins when something real has broken through our illusions and we can no longer comfortably remain as we were. The Cry That Rises Out of Hunger Enos doesn't describe a man casually deciding to become more religious. He describes a man in whom something had sunk deep . The words his father taught him didn't remain at the level of information. They reached into him and...
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Agency, Moral Existence and the Lord’s Pattern

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  Agency, Moral Existence and the Lord’s Pattern Understanding the “How” of Agency in the Lord’s Plan We often say that agency is essential, even mandatory, for man to exist. But what does that actually mean? At first glance, it might sound like without agency we simply would not exist at all, as though we would "poof" right out of existence or never have even been created at all. But the scriptures describe something more precise than mere physical or biological existence. Teachings & Commandments 93 explains that “all truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise, there is no existence.” It continues: “Behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man.” This suggests that agency is bound up with the very kind of existence God intends for intelligence, not merely occupying space, but acting, choosing, receiving, rejecting and t...
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The Morning Is Coming

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No more the night Holds thee his captive Jesus is risen, my Savior and King Yesterday, I found myself saying something out loud that I think I’ve been feeling for a while: Sometimes life feels like too much. Not just busy. Not just hard. Heavy . The kind of heavy that makes you seriously wonder how long you can keep carrying it. I even found myself confessing a dream I've had about escaping, disappearing to a remote island with my husband, far away from responsibility, pressure and noise. Just peace. Just rest. As I tried to explain it to my family, I cycled through words like anxiety, sadness, fear, stress…. each one touching part of it, but not the whole. The closest I could get, the word that seemed to hold it all, was hopelessness . The last month or so has brought some unexpected and deeply difficult things into our home, the kind that don’t have neat explanations and don’t resolve quickly. So naturally, that...
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We've Been Here Before (or: The Telestial Hamster Wheel)

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  Sometimes the world doesn’t need better explanations, it needs people who can recognize the pattern they’re standing in. This Feels Like Progress…. Right? We’ve been here before. That idea lands differently depending on what you believe about existence. Some hear it as despair. I don’t. I hear recognition. Some people hear, “we’re stuck” I hear, “we’re starting to see it” Recognition doesn’t erase the weight of repetition; it transforms how we walk through it. There’s a kind of life that feels like motion but isn’t really progress. Same patterns, same reflexes, same separations dressed up in new circumstances. Call it what you want, but I’ve started thinking of it as: the telestial hamster wheel. You run. You react. You repeat. If you never step back and actually see it, you’ll swear you’re moving forward when you’re really just circling the same ground, over and over. Oh, Yay.... It’s This Lesson Again This s...
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