And it came to pass that there arose a mist of darkness; yea, even an exceedingly great mist of darkness, insomuch that they who had commenced in the path did lose their way, that they wandered off and were lost.
1 Nephi 3:23
The Chasm I dug it with a spade of doubt I dug it deep and wide Until one day I clambered out Upon the other side Looking back, I could not see All I had left behind A veil had dropped in front of me A mist that left me blind My rebel heart had captured me And led me far astray I thought the world had set me free I thought I knew the way I wandered far beyond the mark But every now and then The Light of Christ threw off a spark Illuminating Him
Back in 1965, it was said that young women went to BYU to get an MRS degree. There was a lot of truth in that. Many residents of my dorm in Heritage Halls had set their hearts on one of the numerous returned missionaries on campus.
Whenever someone in the dorms got engaged, she kept it secret until the famous candle ceremony. We all gathered in a circle in the common room in the evening, turned out the lights, and passed around a lit candle with the engagement ring slipped onto it while we sang, “When I Fall in Love,” or an equally romantic ballad. The candle was passed around the circle, and then the engaged one blew out the flame and slipped the ring onto her finger. Happy pandemonium ensued.
Secretly, I thought all this was a bit smarmy. In spite of my disappointment that John wasn’t there and my new interest in real boys, I was far from ready to consider marriage. In contrast to many of my dorm mates, I wasn’t at BYU to get my MRS. I wanted an actual degree. I thought I was going to be a commercial artist. I was rather vague about what that meant, but I had a certain amount of artistic talent, so it seemed like a logical career path to pursue. The wisdom of the time said young ladies who wanted to work before marriage should be teachers, nurses, or secretaries, but I had no interest in those “appropriate” occupations. I signed up for as many art classes as I could fit around the core freshman curriculum.
As for my religious education, I took the required courses. I know I attended Church that first year, but most of the details escape my memory. My freshman roommates and I became friends with two young men from our ward and we went to church and school events together, but they were just “friend boys,” not boyfriends. As for actual boyfriends, Maggie fixated her new fantasy on a tall, mop-haired young man who could have passed for a fifth Beatle, and I pined over one of her cast-offs. Nothing came of it except a pity date and a wounded heart.
But the most memorable event of that school year had nothing to do with boys or school or Church activities. Late one afternoon, my apartment mates and I were sitting at the kitchen table gabbing about this and that when the conversation turned to scary stories. Five of us were freshmen and the sixth was a senior. “Maryann” was from a small town in Idaho. She was friendly and kind, with a loud voice, a big laugh, and somewhat oblivious ways. The rumor around the dorm was that we got stuck with Maryann because none of the returning students wanted to room with her. Whatever the truth, she had happily assumed the role of mother hen to the rest of us, dispensing her homely wisdom whether we welcomed it or not.
On that afternoon at the kitchen table, Maryann related a frightening tale whose details I can’t recall except for one: a fire in a fireplace flaring dangerously in response to an evil spirit. As she spoke, clearly enjoying our rapt attention, the light in the kitchen seemed to grow dimmer, even though the bright overhead light was on. We all sensed this unnatural darkness and felt the growing presence of evil surrounding us, filling the room. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and my skin chilled with fear.
Maryann fell silent. We stared at each other with wide eyes, and then all at once we shoved back our chairs and fell to our knees. Maryann led our urgent prayer for deliverance from the evil spirit that had engulfed us. We were crying and shivering, praying harder than we had ever prayed before. After a few minutes, the darkness began to lift and the room gradually grew bright again. In place of an evil spirit, the room seemed filled with angels of light. It was a physical sensation, as of a stifling black cloak being lifted and replaced by the brilliant white light of heaven.
Breathing shaky sighs of thanks and relief as we rose from our knees, we vowed never to tell scary stories again. What we had imagined to be innocent fun had invoked the presence of true evil, and it had scared us nearly to death.
Even though later in life I would deny the existence of evil as an entity unto itself, deep in my soul I knew it was real. I had felt it that day. It had intelligence, and it meant us harm. I knew evil was not merely the absence of good, as I tried to convince myself, but the very real presence of that fallen spirit whose highest ambition is to deceive and capture souls and make them as wicked and miserable as himself.
By the end of my freshman year, I had bumped up against the limits of my artistic ability and given up on my plan to become a commercial artist. I had more success in a creative writing class. On one of my assignments, the instructor wrote an encouraging comment that read in part: “If you work hard, I should think you have a chance to write to sell.” That possibility had never occurred to me. In view of that instructor’s encouragement, I decided to change my focus from art to literature and creative writing. But an incident during school elections changed my long-term trajectory once again.
I knew John had run for freshman class president the year before and lost by a large margin. On election day I walked into a campus voting booth to cast my vote for that year’s officers. Before I began to mark my ballot, I noticed some writing on the shelf. It said, “John Smith for Freshman Class Clown.” Of course, those words were insulting, but all I could think about was the stroke of fate that had led me to walk into that particular booth over all the others on campus. I took it as a sign and wrote to John at the only address I had for him, his parent’s home in Shreveport.
About a week later I received a note from John’s mother saying he was in army basic training and she had forwarded my letter to him. It was quite some time before John wrote back to me. After basic training, there was boot camp, and then Officers’ Candidate School, and then he was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for further training before going overseas.
The timing of all this is a bit vague in my memory, but I know our correspondence didn’t pick up much steam until my junior year. In the meantime, I was busy going to classes, studying as little as I could get away with, and having a good time. I had put my childhood grief behind me — or so I thought.
Two of my other freshman roommates were also from Southern California like Maggie and me. They were recent converts from the same ward, outgoing, fun-loving, and a little lax when it came to Church standards of behavior. Their bravado appealed to my rebellious streak and soon I was flouting the rules of the dorm. Nothing major, just things like staying out a bit past curfew and sneaking in with the help of my roommates. I was counseled by our dorm parents, but that only made me sneakier.
At the end of freshman year, our apartment won the tongue-in-cheek “Rebels of the Year” award. We were proud of that dubious distinction and taped the official brown-paper banner to our front door. The five of us decided to share an off-campus apartment for our sophomore year. The Rebels of the Year couldn’t wait to get out from under the rules of the dorm.
One thing I’ve learned since I returned to the Church is that testimonies don’t grow by themselves. They must be nourished by daily scripture study and strengthened by heartfelt prayer. They must be renewed by taking the Sacrament each week, recommitting to our baptismal covenant. We need to seek the constant companionship of the Holy Spirit and ask for our own personal witness of Christ and His true doctrine. We need to attend His holy temple as often as we can. If we don’t do those things, whatever spiritual light we’ve gained may flicker and fade until we stand in darkness.
Lest you think your prayers are somehow inadequate, I want to share with you this personal revelation I received on February 24, 2023, in response to my concern that my prayers were too repetitious: “Your prayers are always pleasing unto me. Your words do not matter; it is your faithful heart I love. Come unto me in meekness and I will always bless thee.” I believe that sweet reassurance belongs to all of God’s children, but you should seek your own.
I don’t recall going to Church during my sophomore year. I took the required religion courses, but I remember nothing about them. I didn’t study the scriptures on my own or get down on my knees and pray. I didn’t even think about my testimony. Following the lead of my more worldly roommates, I just wanted to have a good time in between classes and study as little as possible.
On a whim, I enrolled in an acting class, and it turned out I was good at it. I loved immersing myself in a character, pretending I was someone else. It felt as if I actually became someone else for a little while, and that was wonderful. It allowed me to express emotions I had repressed since my father’s death, emotions so intense I could only let them out while pretending to be someone else.
One day our acting exercise was to choose a partner and improvise a tragic scene. My partner and I were assigned a scenario in which a mother had to tell her daughter that her newborn infant had died. I played the younger woman, lying in a hospital bed made of chairs. When my “mother” gave me the tragic news, I became that young mother whose beloved child had died. I experienced her shock, her disbelief, her devastating grief and pain as if they were my own. Unbearable sorrow pierced me to the depths of my soul. I cried so hard and so convincingly that the whole class was stunned by my acting ability. If they’d known I wasn’t acting, they wouldn’t have been so impressed.
I loved acting so much that I considered declaring dramatic arts as my major, but it was impractical in terms of career goals, so I left my major undeclared. I was still aimless and drifting. Meanwhile, my rebellious streak was widening.
We weren’t supposed to have boys in our apartment, but that “silly” rule didn’t stop the Rebels of the Year. I allowed myself to be swallowed up by the worldly attitudes of my friends until they became my own. The truth is, I was born with an independent streak. I must have brought that trait with me from the pre-existence. According to my mother, I wanted to do everything for myself as soon as I was able, or even before. One of my first full sentences was, “Do it self, Mommy!”
Having an independent streak a mile wide can be both a blessing and a curse. It’s good to do things for yourself, but you also need to rely on others. If you refuse to do that, you isolate yourself, to your detriment. Carried to extremes, insisting on maximum independence isolates you even from God. And that was at the root of my self-imposed exile from the Church. I didn’t want anyone, even God, telling me what I could and couldn’t do.
Maggie left BYU in the middle of our sophomore year. The young woman who replaced her in our apartment fit right in with the rule-breaking habits of my other roommates, leaving me without a compass or a connection to home. I was free-floating at the edge of the fallen world, dangling my toes over the abyss.
None of my former roommates returned to BYU for junior year, so I had all new ones in my new apartment. They were nice, but much “churchier” than my fellow Rebels of the Year, and I didn’t feel like I fit in.
At the beginning of the semester, I auditioned for a part in a new play written by Doug Stewart. Called “A Day, a Night, and a Day,” it dramatized the Book of Mormon story recorded in 3 Nephi when enemies of the Church threatened to put believers to death if the prophesied signs of Christ’s birth didn’t appear by the expected time.
To my delight, I was cast in the play. Although it was a small part, that production was the highlight of my years at BYU, bringing me added confidence in myself. But I was still aimless and drifting, and had yet to declare a major. I didn’t know what I was doing there. I wasn’t good enough to be an artist; I had no illusions of making a living as an actress; and I didn’t know what to do with my supposed talent for writing.
One night that semester I met a young man at a school dance. He was fun and charming and handsome, and we had a good time together. Mike wasn’t a member of the Church. He wasn’t even a student at BYU. He worked as a sign painter and lived in a basement apartment near campus. Looking back, I can see how skillfully he led me along with his charm and persistence. I let things go too far before I was fully aware of what was happening.
It’s so easy to justify sin. All you need to do is deny its existence. But in order to do that, you have to deny the reality of Satan as the author of sin. And if you deny Satan’s existence, you also deny the existence of God. From the scriptures we know that there must be opposition in all things (see 2 Nephi 2:11). If there’s no evil, there can be no good. Once you deny the reality of sin, you become lost in the world of relativism, telling yourself, “Yes, I did this, but it’s not nearly so bad as that.”
By the light of the Church I had committed a serious sin, but I had already drifted so far into the world that I couldn’t feel the attendant guilt, so I went on committing that sin. My roommates, guessing how far I had strayed from the standards of the Church, tried to pull me back, but my ears were deaf and my eyes were blind.
One morning I decided to give God one last chance. In the living room of our apartment, I got down on my knees and prayed to know if the Church was true. No still, small voice whispered in my ear, and I thought I had my answer. As I rose from my knees, the campus bell tower began to play the melody of a familiar hymn. I don’t recall which one it was, but I know now that the words of that hymn were meant to be my answer. I was already too far away to heed them. Dismissing that message from a loving Heavenly Father as a mere coincidence of timing, I walked away from His Church into a “great mist of darkness.” (1 Nephi 8:23)
Reflecting on that fateful decision, I can see clearly that it followed years of growing doubt, years during which I did nothing to strengthen my faith or my testimony. No one noticed I was struggling because I kept it to myself. My powerful need to be self-sufficient, born of grief over my father’s death and my mother’s emotional withdrawal, had finally excluded even God. I gave up on Him but, as future chapters will show, He never gave up on me.
How many Saints are struggling with these same doubts today? How many young Church members believe there’s no coming back from sexual sin? How many are failing to do the necessary things to strengthen their testimony, to make it a bulwark against the inevitable storms of life in these turbulent last days?
Satan rages through the world, salting the path before us with temptations that grow harder and harder to resist. The adversary makes those temptations seem reasonable and desirable. He inspires well-meaning people to couch sin in the language of tolerance, freedom, and even love. I know, because for many years I was one of those people. For instance, I considered the doctrine of being saved only through Jesus Christ exclusionary and unfair. After listening to an October 2022 general conference talk by Ryan Olson, a newly sustained General Authority Seventy, I wrote this in my journal:
I used to think that doctrine was elitist and exclusionary. It was a huge stumbling block for me. Now I know it is inclusionary; it includes all who will believe the truth — and all will hear it and have a chance to accept or reject it.
Satan’s wiles are insidious. He wants us to forget that we’re called to hate the sin and love the sinner. He would have us forget that mercy follows repentance. He would have us believe that a God who demands justice from unrepentant sinners is a cruel tyrant when the truth is just the opposite. God’s justice is itself merciful. Contemplating our sins in sorrow and pain is meant to drive us to our knees, harrowing our souls in sharp awareness of our guilt. On our knees before our loving Heavenly Father, sincerely seeking His forgiveness with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, we are washed clean by the redeeming power of His Son’s infinite Atonement. There is no greater joy in all the world than knowing you are clean before God. (see Alma 42:22-23, 25)
We live in a fallen world. Sins and temptations, great and small, surround us, clamoring for our souls. Being imperfect, mortal creatures, we are bound to succumb from time to time even as we strive for perfection. God’s justice and mercy light our path back to Him.
But I was ignorant of these things as I stumbled through the dark, intent on going it alone, still proudly wearing an invisible badge that proclaimed me “Rebel of the Year.” I would wear that badge for the next fifty-five years, until my life and my God led me full circle, back to His Church.
Memoirs of a Prodigal Daughter 