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Ever had a challenge that felt like a mountain—one you couldn’t possibly climb over or get around?
I imagine we all have. I know I have.
Why do we compare a challenge to a mountain? Why not a roadblock or a speed bump or a dead end?
Think about mountains. They test us, try us, stretch us. At an extreme, they can break us down or even make us come to a frustrating halt. But that’s only part of the story, and here’s why a mountain is so appropriate to describe the very real challenges we all face: even while they try us and stretch us, mountains also inspire us. They stir our souls. They channel our resolve and refine our faith. And with each courageous step, they show us that we are limitless—that we can reach heights we never imagined possible.
As we confront a mountain, we eventually discover that we have what it takes to reach the finish line in this race known as mortality. To read more, click the button below.
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- Written by Kathryn Jenkins Oveson
What do a glow stick and a precipitously steep embankment of boulders have in common?
My children used to love glow sticks—and I remember with fondness an occasion when we were watching fireworks light up the summer sky. Each of the kids had a glow stick, and the older ones quickly snapped theirs, delighted with the resulting luminous glow. My three-year-old, however, waved her unlighted stick around with glee, not seeming to notice that hers had no light. As her nine-year-old brother tried to take it from her to activate it, she ferociously hung on to her stick, refusing to let go. Finally, her bigger, stronger brother managed to wrest the glow stick away.
He quickly snapped it and handed it back to his little sister, who beamed. As he did, he told her, “I had to break it so you could get the light.”
How like that toddler are we? How often God must look at our lives and think, You are clinging so tenaciously to your current condition—but I have to break you to show you why I created you. You have to experience that “break” so you can fulfill the purpose of your creation. (To read more, click the button below.)
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- Written by Kathryn Jenkins Oveson
The history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints contains a lesser-known gem of a story that could change your life.
A New York woman named Mary Whitmer had her hands full. And she was getting exasperated. Her house had been bulging at the seams before Joseph and Emma Smith and Oliver Cowdery arrived. Joseph and Oliver set up shop in an upstairs room, where they were translating what Mary understood to be gold plates. But she hadn’t seen those plates. Even though she’d asked. No one had. She now had more mouths to feed and more work to do, and she wasn’t so sure she believed any of it anymore. To read more, click the button below.
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- Written by Kathryn Jenkins Oveson
Turns out I can learn a lot from how one group of people dealt with a virus. (Maybe not this virus, but a virus nonetheless.) Stick with me, because there’s something here for all of us.
At the age of twelve, Bengt Johnson Jr.—my maternal great-grandfather—left Sweden on April 6, 1862, with his parents and two younger brothers. Nine days later, they boarded the Franklin at Hamburg, Germany, part of a group of 413 Scandinavian Latter-day Saints bound for Zion.
There was nothing comfy about this journey. The 413 passengers had 160 bunks, each wide enough for three people to sleep side by side. (That means two of Bengt’s family shared with “someone else.”) Those were close quarters. But no worries: they were thoroughly “fumigated” twice a week with burning tar. To read more, click the button below.
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- Written by Kathryn Jenkins Oveson
There’s a great saying in writing circles. It goes something like this: You’d better be nice to me, or you could end up in my next novel. It’s been on mugs. T-shirts. All kinds of paraphernalia.
It’s a hilarious but fair word of warning. If you’re my friend, or the friend of any other writer, you too could end up in a novel. Names changed to protect the innocent, of course.
Many of my friends are great storytellers, and they say the most amazing things. Which means that I take mental notes as I listen to them—or rush home to write it down, or sometimes write it down as soon as I get to the car, or even jot it down on a napkin wherever I’m eating. By now, I have quite a collection of phenomena I can weave into stories of my own. In fact, I have some real doozies. To read more, click the button below.
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- Written by Kathryn Jenkins Oveson