art: "Home" by Amber Ellis Eldredge,https://thecoloramber.me/ I will forever be in awe of a loving Father in Heaven who tailors personal curriculum for each of His children. As a former private teacher, the thought exhausts me and fills me with awe. Everyone gets his or her own private lessons, and I once heard someone say Father, in His great wisdom, is able to factor human stupidity into the lessons. Glib though that may be, it underscores that Father is able to turn not ju

It felt important to lay out my fraught experience with motherhood before I offered an opinion about a reel that felt like propaganda in favor of mothers working outside their homes. (https://www.laureensimper.com/post/because-i-came-home) Thanks to the shared mentality from the Tower of Babel/Babylon, we humans tend to compare. A LOT. Women, particularly. I say this to reiterate: if any woman reading this got different revelation than mine - made different choices than mine

Warning: this is long and it's only part 1 of 3, but I don't know how to tell this short. I've needed to write about my journey through the workplace and back home for quite a while now. A dear friend who is a young mother on the front lines with three littles sent me a prop reel a few weeks ago, wondering what I thought of it. I say "prop reel" because it had the feel of advocation for a specific life path - that of a working mother. Rhetoric was specific and targeted. It go

I need to tell you about my mama. She grew up in Murray, Utah. Her mother was pioneer stock - my 3rd great grandfather is atop the This is the Place Monument. Her father was born here after his mother and her parents immigrated from Sweden. Grandpa worked at the Murray smelter until it closed, and then at a paint store. Grandma kept a clean and tidy house, stating often that "soap was cheap." Mom loved music, and loved it when the family had the radio on in the evenings. It u

Look at these two cuties, would you? The date was June 2, 1955. Seventy years ago, these two young pups went into the Salt Lake Temple as...

I saw Little Women at the Hale Center Theater this weekend. It was a wonderful musical production of one of my all-time favorite novels,...

I went to Narnia this summer. I've only been one other time; I took my son when he was 10; he's going to be 34 in a few weeks. These last...

Mother’s Day used to really bug me as a young mother. I remember one particularly poignant Mother’s Day when my first child was 2 or 3....

(Originally posted May 16, 2022) I was 16 when the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down in 1973. In my sheltered naivete, I was horrified...

One of the most memorable movies of my childhood is Shenandoah - filmed in 1965 and starring Jimmy Stewart. The thing that made it...

(Original post April 30, 2022) I was the burnt waffle. Erma Bombeck wrote that it’s too bad we can’t do children the way we do a batch of...

Friday morning, long hike day. Dale's been doing it since retirement, except for the long months of my illness, hospitalization, and recovery. He craves his hike days like oxygen or chocolate chippers, his finely-honed cookie recipe, which he sometimes takes on his hikes. We say prayers together, and like most hiking days, there are two prayers going on in my head: the one I am saying out loud, and the one I am saying in my head. The one out loud: "Father - please bless us wi

(Original post January 2023) It's just an ordinary plate from a Mexican shop in Ensenada. Probably didn’t even cost $20. I bought it on a...

[Originally published March 17, 2018] As we embrace our divine roles as mothers, it’s natural that we will suddenly find ourselves in...

[Originally published March 17, 2017] I was privileged to share this essay with UN delegates at the annual Commission on the Status of Women in March 2017: A societal movement to diminish motherhood has been in the propaganda mills of elite central planners for generations. This is spelled out in new policy being considered at the UN, and calls for "measures to recognize, reduce and redistribute women's [and girls'] disproportionate [burden] of unpaid care of care and domesti

[Originally published October 31, 2011] You can learn a lot from your kids. Grant spoke in church yesterday, and gave a beautiful talk...

[Originally published October 21, 2011] Two days ago, we had a taste of what I imagine it's like to pass through the veil at the end of...

[Originally published October 17, 2011] So much to do in the next 30 hours. So for now, I just have to say that tomorrow, my little boy...