…for I do know that whosoever shall put their trust in God shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their afflictions, and shall be lifted up at the last day.
Alma 36:3
His Path
He bids us to become as little children, meek and lowly, with joyful hearts, and soft steps, walking in His path. His yoke is as easy as a garland of flowers, His burden as light as a crown of feathers. Thus arrayed, we will follow Him, dancing in His path.
I clung to the illusion of a happy marriage for as long as I could, and probably much longer than I should have. I wasn’t ready to let go of the memory of that idealistic young man. With characteristic stubbornness, I convinced myself everything would work out and kept muddling through. I simply didn’t allow myself to think about it.
At some point during the early years of our marriage, John said to me in a disgusted tone of voice, “You’d better never start believing in God again.” He made belief in God sound like a dreaded disease. I don’t recall what triggered that bitter command. It may have been the sudden death of his father from a hidden heart condition, or his only brother’s suicide by gun. Those blows, which could have turned a believer more toward a loving Heavenly Father for comfort, instead pushed John further away, and he insisted on dragging me with him.
The irony is that twenty-four years after I left him, at my brother-in-law’s funeral, John asked me if I’d been saved. His third wife, from whom he was separated, was a Wesleyan Christian, and John, who had once disgustedly commanded me never to believe in God again, had found Jesus. With my return to the Church still two decades in the future, I found his about-face amusing.
Many times over the years since I left him I’ve tried to forgive John for the way he treated me. Just when I think I’ve succeeded, another troubling memory pops up and I’m angry at him all over again. Since I returned to the Church, I’ve tried harder, seeking Heavenly Father’s help in letting go of all that old pain and resentment.
In Doctrine and Covenants 64:10, we’re told, “I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.” Forgiveness is a commandment we must obey for our own sake. If we don’t forgive everyone who ever hurt or offended us, we won’t be forgiven our own sins and transgressions, and the specter of old grudges will continue to damage our souls.
On October 6, 2022, while reading the chapter titled, “The Three Beloved Friends,” in Neil L. Anderson’s wonderful book The Divine Gift of Forgiveness, I recorded this insight in my spiritual journal:
Jesus urges us over and over again to become like little children. What does He mean by that? Not just “children,” but “little children,” children before the age of accountability. I believe He is urging us to become innocent, to purge our hearts of all anger, all resentment, all old hurt and pain; to truly become like a little child, pure in heart and pure in love. Only then can He cleanse and purify our souls. But we have to desire this change above all else. We have to offer Him our broken hearts and contrite spirits. We have to want repentance and forgiveness above all else. Only then can He gather us unto Himself as a hen gathers her chicks.
Then, on the evening of December 23, 2022, I prayed that in writing this book I might be able to fully forgive “John,” and I asked if he had accepted the true gospel on the other side of the veil. “Yes,” the Holy Spirit whispered. “He is well. You will see him and all will be well.”
My heart soared in gratitude. I asked Heavenly Father to forgive me for holding anger against John in my heart all this time and I was given this blessed assurance: “You are forgiven, Daughter. You are washed clean.” A profound sense of relief and release washed over me as I asked John’s forgiveness for the hurt I caused when I left him.
I pray that everyone within reach of these words will ask Heavenly Father’s help to forgive everyone who has ever hurt them. Please don’t carry that old, petrified pain to your grave. Let the Father and Son soften your heart and lift that burden from your shoulders before you cross the veil.
How I wish John had heard and heeded those words. On February 5, 2012, two days after what would have been our forty-forth wedding anniversary, he sat down under a tree in a San Diego cemetery, put the barrel of a gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. As far as I know, he left no suicide note. Maybe some hidden emotional pain that fueled his cruel streak had finally caught up with him, or maybe he looked back on his life and couldn’t bear the gulf between the man he’d meant to be and the man he’d become.
While we were married, I couldn’t see my husband’s buried pain through the dark lens of my own. We were two damaged souls who didn’t know how to heal ourselves, let alone each other. It might have been different if we had allowed God into our lives, if we had known that His Son had suffered all our sorrows and stood ready to succor us if we would only reach out to Him. As for John’s spiritual conversion, sadly, it didn’t go deep enough to save him.
Writing these chapters has forced me to think more deeply about my failed first marriage than ever before, and I’ve figured something out: I couldn’t leave John any sooner than I did because he anchored me. If I let go of him I was afraid I’d float away, that I’d truly become that naked infant floating alone in the vast darkness of an uncaring universe. I was terrified to let go of my anchor until I found another.
If I had made Christ my anchor, I might have found the courage to admit my marriage was over and move forward into the unknown with the Good Shepherd as my rock and my guide. But I can’t regret the way things happened, because my desperate, though unacknowledged, attempts to escape my first marriage led me to my eternal companion.
I know Heavenly Father didn’t want me to turn my back on Him, but He is omniscient, and He knew exactly what course I would choose at every moment of my life. I am His beloved daughter, as each of us is His beloved child, known so well that nothing we do surprises Him. He puts in our path those experiences we need for our progress in this life and the next. We use the agency He gave us to choose the right or the wrong path. I strayed so far from the right path in those days that it’s painful to recall, let alone write about. I was fully in the world, smack-dab in the middle of that great and spacious building, and I let the world determine my behavior.
As I struggled to find my way forward, Christ suffered with me through the turmoil, disillusionment, and grief of my first marriage. He had already suffered for my sins and transgressions and, although I didn’t know Him then, He never deserted me as I made mistake after foolish mistake, including drinking alcohol to excess and trying “recreational” drugs. He was always there, waiting for me to turn and catch a glimpse of Him, but I was prideful and stubborn, insisting on making my own way through the fallen world, choosing shallow satisfactions over the deep delights of the soul.
Since returning to the Church, I’ve undertaken a scriptural study of the subject of pride, which, as we know from the Book of Mormon, is an ultimate cause of apostasy. But why are we so proud? Why do we get so carried away in the pride of our hearts that we can’t see how dangerous it is? On March 13, 2023, while revising this book, I asked Heavenly Father why we humans are so filled with pride. Here’s His surprising answer; at least it was surprising to me, and very revealing:
“Pride stems from fear of not being the one in control, of giving your whole self over to Me and My Son. Your gift of agency can turn into pride when your mind tells you you must be in control of your life.”
I’d never equated pride with fear, but it makes sense, doesn’t it?
After I returned to the Church, I prayerfully sought understanding of a difficult personal situation involving pride. Here is that journal entry from October 10, 2022:
Q: Did I understand these consequences when I was still with Thee?
A: “Partly. Not all. Full understanding of mortality comes only in mortality.”
Q: Is that because innocent spirits cannot fathom man’s capacity for stubbornness and pride?
A: “Yes, certainly. This is part of your trial.”
Q: Am I failing it?
A: “No. You are moving through it. Have patience and forbearance. Look to yourself, not others. Look to me for approbation, not mortal men and women. Do as I ask and all will be well.”
Q: Eventually?
A: “Yes, eventually.”
—Thank you, Father.
Studying the scriptures on difficult subjects, and then praying and pondering, has led me to many illuminating personal revelations from the Holy Spirit. It will do the same for you.
To continue my story, while I was still in court-reporting school, I worked part-time at a deposition firm, running a Xerox machine the size of a closet. My job was to copy and bind depositions — sworn testimony before trial — for delivery to the attorneys involved in each case. In March and again in May of 1976, I was sent to New York City with two court reporters and a transcriptionist to produce daily bound depositions for a dozen attorneys in a massive case involving a national bank.
On the last night of the May trip, acquaintances from the law offices where I was producing the “dailies” invited me to join them at a neighborhood bar in Midtown Manhattan. I was sitting at the bar, talking with an artist I’d just met when he turned to greet someone walking by. I turned to look, and my heart leaped. It was the strangest sensation. I’d never seen that dark-haired, dark-eyed man before, but somehow I knew him.
I’ve described this event many times as “love at first sight,” but it went much deeper than that. I can’t explain it, but the feeling was profound and real. It wasn’t until I returned to the Church that I realized the truth: David and I were always meant to be eternal companions. You might think it strange that I met my eternal companion in a bar many years before I came home. All I can say is that, in my experience, Heavenly Father works with us where and when we are.
I had found my new anchor, but it would be more than a year before I could make the final break from John. That year was filled with anguish and guilt. As I fell more deeply in love with David and he fell in love with me, I still couldn’t admit that I no longer loved John. Trying to love two men at once was tearing me apart.
One day in the stairwell at work, weighed down by months of conflicting emotions, I suddenly saw a way out of the agonizing trap that held me fast. I was gripped by a powerful urge to turn and throw myself down the stairs, hoping to break my neck and die. In that moment of raw pain, death seemed preferable to my suffering. But as I stood on the top step looking down, something stopped me. Some spark of reason, or the flickering light of Christ in my soul, kept me from following through.
I knew then that I needed professional help. As soon as I could get to a phone, I made an appointment with a psychologist at the state mental health clinic. Talking through my conflicting emotions helped. At least it eased me back from the brink of suicide and kept me going until the day I finally found the courage to make my choice. But I was an emotional shipwreck, and the end of my marriage was as messy as my tangled and explosive state of mind.
Over the year since I’d met David and fallen in love with him, I’d returned to New York several times to be with him, once on a solo cross-country road trip. He was so different from John. He never tried to control me. Our relationship was one of equals. We enjoyed each other’s company, and I was never afraid he was going to give me a disgusted look for doing something that displeased him. I could trust David in a way I couldn’t trust my husband. I was still anchored to John, but the chain was stretching to the breaking point.
In late May 1977, I had just returned from a three-week stay in New York. David was devastated when I left, and I was so distraught that I boarded the wrong plane. Luckily a flight attendant caught my mistake before the doors closed. By the time my flight landed in San Diego, I was nearly catatonic. John started in on me on the drive home, pushing me to talk about all the things I couldn’t express until I begged him to stop, to let me rest. But he wouldn’t, or couldn’t. I was his hostile witness and he was going to cross-examine me even if it killed me.
Finally, he let me sleep. When I woke the next morning, I felt as if I were being ripped into a billion tiny pieces. I made John drive me to the state mental hospital. I wanted to be shut up in a room with white walls, in a bed with white sheets, with white-garbed doctors and nurses coming and going on silent feet. No sounds, no sights but those four white walls, no relentless voice demanding answers. Certainly, John deserved answers, but I couldn’t give them. My emotions were too raw.
I sat across the desk from a middle-aged psychologist, compulsively shredding a tissue, desperately trying to persuade him to give me my white room. He refused. He said I seemed to have a “good grasp” on my problems and didn’t need to be admitted. He wouldn’t give me my white room!
My anger saved me. Rage at that man’s refusal to let me hide from John’s incessant interrogation rose like a volcano in my heart. Storming out of his office, I ran all the way to the parking lot and beat my fists on the hood of our old Volkswagen Beetle, screaming and crying until I wore myself out. I must have scared John speechless because I can’t recall him saying a single word on the drive home.
The next morning I woke up with such a stiff neck that John had to help me into the car to take me to a chiropractor. My neck and shoulder muscles were set like bricks. The chiropractor sent me home to lie on the couch with a rolled towel under my neck for three days before she could even begin to adjust my spine.
During those three still, quiet days, I made my choice. I asked John to buy me a bus ticket back to New York. He could see I was adamant, and he was probably afraid I’d explode again, so he did as I asked and dropped me off at the bus station as soon as I could move. I hadn’t even unpacked my bags.
The woman sitting behind me on the bus had a hacking cough. By the time I was halfway across the country, I was already sick. When my bus pulled into the Midtown Manhattan terminal on June 1, 1977, I had a bad case of bronchitis, verging on pneumonia, but I felt great relief, even triumph, through my fever. I had finally done it. I had left John for good. It would be more than a year before the divorce was final, but my marriage was over. I had clung to it as hard as I could, not out of love, I realized later, but out of stubbornness, indecision, and the fear of being alone in the world. Now I had my new anchor. I wasn’t afraid anymore.
It’s hard to admit I was so insecure in those days, that for all my rebelliousness and pride I couldn’t face the world on my own, but that picture of myself as a naked infant floating alone in the vast dark was still lodged at my core. It would take a cathartic event far in the future to erase that image. In the meantime, for the next forty-four years, David’s love kept me from floating out into space, alone and afraid. Yes, I had found my new anchor, but my travails were far from over.
Memoirs of a Prodigal Daughter 