My first divorce exhausted me in mind, body, and spirit. I felt like I had just been kicked in the stomach all the time for about 4 years. I felt so much anxiety about all of the life changes occasioned by divorce that I couldn't even open my mail at certain times. I would think, […]

There comes a crossroads moment in every dating relationship where the relationship needs to become exclusive and move toward marriage or transition to friendship and discontinue dating each other. These are the most difficult decisions we face in dating. Each person will have his or her own set of considerations that are most important in […]

You know the cringe-worthy old married people who openly bicker about each other in front of other people? Perhaps one of them is telling a story "for the millionth time” or the other remembers it differently and jumps in to correct the details. The first one takes offense and says something snarky. Meanwhile, everyone else […]

As many of you know, Cathy and I both had brief second marriages following lengthy first marriages. In one case, the prior marriage was to someone who stonewalled (simply shut down and refused to talk about anything difficult or stressful). This is one of the Gottman's "Four Horsemen of the Marriage Apocalypse." After that kind […]

In Lehi's dream we are taught of a "strait and narrow path" representing the way to salvation. (1 Nephi 8:20.) I always assumed that "strait" meant direct--like a straight line. This weekend I learned something new. At the adult session of our stake conference this weekend, our stake president, Brian Tate, spoke about the biblical […]

My wise cousin, Violet Rose Clift, wrote the very vulnerable essay below, about how her earthly father and Heavenly Father sustained her in the most painful moment of her life--and since then. It was a moment when she doubted whether God cared for her at all. Looking back, she can see that God was there. […]