Come unto me, all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Matthew 11:28
Roll the Stone Away
Roll the stone away It is not heavy For He makes our Burdens light Roll the stone away From the empty tomb For He is not dead But rose for us That we may rise Roll the stone away And free your heart From pain and fear Roll the stone away And forgive all the Wrongs of the past Roll the stone away And live forever In His love
The next twenty-two years were increasingly interrupted by doctor visits, hospital stays, and surgical procedures. Each time David got a new stent, his health improved dramatically — until he needed another one a year or two later. During these relatively healthy intervals, we continued to enjoy our life together. We spent time on the bay, boating and fishing, whenever we could.
In 1997 I took a part-time job as a proofreader and copyeditor with a regional newspaper publisher. Over the next fourteen years, I worked my way up until I was made editor of special publications. Every Labor Day weekend our house was filled with friends from the city and as far away as California. David’s business was doing well. When he felt healthy life was good. At times we could almost forget the sword hanging over our heads. But then his angina and shortness of breath would return. Stents and powerful medications couldn’t keep him going forever.
I visited my family in California a few times during those years. I always went to church with them, but I didn’t take the sacrament. I wasn’t hostile to the LDS Church; I just didn’t believe. I was glad my sisters had maintained or renewed their faith. They seemed to need doctrines to believe in, and their faith kept them going through hard times, so I was happy for them, but I felt no need for organized religion.
By 1999, David and I were ready to downsize from our four-bedroom house and big yard and started looking for a much smaller house on the water. We finally found a place we could afford if we sold our house for the price we wanted, invested every available penny, and took out a small loan. We made an offer before our house was even on the market, but it all worked out and we moved eight miles farther east a week before my fifty-second birthday.
The day we moved in I sat on the bulkhead and watched a skein of honking Canada geese fly up the tidal creek just above my head. I felt as if we’d arrived in an enchanted land. We bought a larger fishing boat and I got a kayak. Most mornings I paddled down the creek into Southold Bay and back before work, enjoying the silent glide through the water.
David still had his graphic- and exhibit-design business, working for one big client, an international accounting firm. He occasionally flew to Chicago or some other city to supervise the assembly of exhibits at industry trade shows. Business was good and while he was in good health he enjoyed it. Then came a day that changed the world forever.
Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was a bright, sunny, later-summer day. At the newspaper office, our work was just getting started when someone heard the news that a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. We all gathered in front of the TV in the conference room. We didn’t yet know what sort of plane it was, or if it had been accidental or deliberate. Like many people, I imagined that a private jet must have gone out of control.
We were waiting for a coherent report when a second plane appeared on the screen, heading for the second tower. I think we all held our breath, unable to believe what we were seeing, as that huge jetliner flew straight into the tower. It felt surreal, like watching a particularly weird episode of “The Twilight Zone,” only this was real. It was happening right in front of our eyes, and we were only ninety miles away. Every person in that room must have been thinking the words I whispered into the stunned silence: “Nothing will ever be the same.” The world had darkened in an instant and none of us felt safe anymore.
We learned later that the hijackers had crashed another jet into the Pentagon, and a fourth jet, apparently headed for our nation’s capitol, had been brought down by brave passengers in a Pennsylvania field. The death toll that day was 2,977 souls. Three of them were executives employed by David’s client. The company banned all air travel, which meant no more trade shows and no more exhibit work. David’s business was a minor casualty of the terrorist attacks.
No one I knew personally died on 9/11, but our newspapers were filled with poignant stories of relatives and friends of locals who had died or narrowly escaped. The whole country was traumatized. For a change, New York City was an object of sympathy rather than scorn.
The manner of the attacks — airplanes crashing into immovable objects — held particular resonance for me because of the way my father died. I needed an outlet for my grief and anxiety, so I began writing poems and songs about the tragedy and the outpouring of sympathy and support from around the country.
Feeling the need for deeper comfort, I also began to meditate, hoping for spiritual insight. I wanted to know how humans could be so filled with hate. I couldn’t have articulated it then, but I needed to know the truth about good and evil. At the time, I imagined evil to be merely the absence of good, and hate to be the absence of love.
One day during that turbulent time, as I was meditating, I had a somewhat metaphorical vision and wrote an essay about it.
The Golden Cloud
Seeking an understanding of the terrible things happening in the world, I closed my eyes and saw the blue globe of Earth. It was surrounded by a cloud of golden, glowing light, and I understood that this golden cloud was made up of countless guardian souls, emanating inexpressible love and tenderness to humankind. Then I saw the brightest light and darkest black, and all shades in between, pulsating up from all the continents and islands of Earth, the light reaching up to touch the golden cloud, the darkness blocking the light for a time in some places, always pulsing, pulsing. I saw mostly darkness over troubled places — Israel and Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq. Yet even in those places rays of brilliant light were trying to break through.
Then I saw the towers of the World Trade Center as they crumbled into dust. I saw all the souls of those who died streaming up to meet the golden cloud of guardian souls that surrounded them as they rose, and I felt the tremendous love that embraced and comforted them. Then I saw the souls of the terrorists rise up in black clouds, only to be engulfed in golden light. I felt their shock and pain when they realized what they had done and knew they had been duped by their own fear and ignorance and that of their leaders. I heard their howls of grief and lamentation and I was moved to tears of pity. I prayed to God to forgive these children of His who had gone so far astray, for they did not understand the evil they were doing.
Then I saw the whole globe of Earth again, and I saw that the golden light of love pulsing up from the continents and islands was stronger than the grays and blacks of ignorance, fear and hatred; that even in the midst of darkness, love is always there. We need only reach up and touch the golden cloud.
I knew I had to keep that vision to myself. Our government was at war against those they held responsible for the attacks and people were in no mood to grant pity or mercy to the hijackers. If I revealed my vision, I’d be branded a bleeding-heart fool at best, and a traitor at worst. So I kept it to myself and pondered it in my heart, wondering why it had come to me.
Since returning to the Church, I think I’ve learned the answer. I believe Heavenly Father, in response to my seeking, allowed me to see that vision and feel the hijackers’ terrible remorse in order to enlarge my heart, so that I might increase in empathy for all of His children, even those who have gone so far astray. I think He wanted me to learn to love my enemies and to experience the ultimate sorrow of a hardened heart.
More than that, I think He wanted to drive home to me the power of Christ’s Atonement. Only Jesus Christ knows the full extent of our pain, our sorrow, and our guilt. By prayer and faith, by repenting and seeking His forgiveness, we can partake of His mercy and His perfect empathy for all human suffering, even the suffering of our worst enemies. I believe the golden cloud symbolized His love and mercy and His angels surrounding us with love.
I can’t help but wonder where the balance between light and dark stands today, more than twenty years later. In these latter days, it seems as if the whole world is enveloped in darkness, and yet the light from God’s holy temples grows brighter every day. Light emanates from each of Heavenly Father’s faithful children, and that light increases as we walk in His Son’s footsteps. Jesus Christ is the light of the world, and every human shares in that light, whether they know it or not. As we who nurture that light strive to live worthily and endure to the end, our portion of the light will help to hold back the dark until He comes again in glory to illuminate the whole world with His love and drive all darkness away.
So I want to say this to you: If you feel your light of faith begin to flicker, remember that host of loving angels reaching down to strengthen your little flame. All of heaven is on your side. Ministering angels from both sides of the veil stand ready to come to your aid if you will only reach out to our Heavenly Father. Your faith need be no larger than a tiny mustard seed, and He will hear and answer in His own way and time.
Heavenly Father knows exactly what we need and when we need it even if we don’t, even if our cry is only a desperate, “Help me!” from the depths of our despair. He will always hear and help, though perhaps not in the way we expect. His help might come from the inner urge to repent of our sins and transgressions or to help someone else in need of aid. Trust that urge, if it is toward good. All that’s good comes from God. If we will align our will with His, He will lead us back home.
Yet, when we ask God for specific results, His answer might be “No,” or “Not now.” Heavenly Father knows what each of His children needs. In my case, it was to remain outside His true Church for a while longer. He had many more lessons to teach me before I was ready to return to Him with my whole heart and soul. Some of those lessons were beautiful and uplifting, while others were exceedingly painful. I didn’t know it then, but all of them would be for my good. As I turned more toward God, He would make my weak places strong and turn my mortal sorrows to everlasting joy.
About a month after 9/11, I felt impelled to seek comfort in the Christian faith of my childhood. Not the LDS Church, but a Presbyterian Church pastored by a wonderful woman. She was nearly six feet tall, kind, compassionate, and welcoming. I still didn’t believe in doctrines, but I needed the comfort I recalled from Sunday School of a nurturing, fatherly God and His kindly Son. I started attending church each Sunday, and soon I was singing in the choir.
The congregation was tiny and made up almost exclusively of elderly members. Some Sundays there were more of us in the choir than in the pews. When we recited the Apostles’ Creed I always felt uncomfortable, because I didn’t believe in a literal virgin birth or resurrection. I looked at those things as mere symbols. But I loved being part of a church community, and I especially loved singing hymns.
A few months later I was ordained an elder in the Presbyterian Church. I served on the ruling council, helping to organize the business of our tiny congregation and attending regional meetings with our pastor. As the months passed, I began to feel the tug of certain hymns. When we sang “Here I Am, Lord,” my knees trembled and tears filled my eyes.
One night when I couldn’t sleep, I went out to the living room and lay on the couch. Feeling the pull toward God, weeping with longing for Him, I reached up my hand and felt Him reaching down to me, calling me back. Not long after that, one morning as I got ready for work, I heard a distinct voice in my mind and heart, calling me to serve His people. I don’t remember the exact words, but what I received that morning was a powerful call to the ministry in the Presbyterian Church.
Since my return to the fold of the Saints, I’ve wondered why Heavenly Father called me to His service in another church. On June 27, 2022, the day after I gave a talk in Sacrament meeting, I asked the Holy Spirit for an answer to that question and recorded it in my spiritual journal.
Q: You called me to the ministry of another Church. Was that to keep me close and prepare me to return to your true Church with knowledge and skills?
A: “Yes, certainly.”
But my path back to the true Church wasn’t straight or smooth.
David’s only exposure to religion had been negative. During his sickly childhood, he had from time to time been left in the care of stern nuns who soured him on the whole idea of religion. He hadn’t objected when I began attending church and even went with me on Christmas and Easter, but that was as far as he was willing to go.
When I told David I wanted to become a minister he was dismayed, but he didn’t try to dissuade me, and he didn’t complain when I enrolled in Empire State College, the distance-learning branch of the State University of New York, to complete my bachelor’s degree. After that, I’d have to graduate from a theological seminary before I could be ordained to the ministry. All that schooling would take several years. I think David hoped I’d abandon the notion before I could finish school. But I’d been called to serve God’s people, and I was determined to follow through.
I couldn’t afford to quit my job, so I was busy every minute. David helped me navigate the intricacies of student grants and loans. He supported my decision in any way I needed. I think he still secretly hoped I’d give up on it, but I loved studying the history of religions, especially those of the ancient Near East, and I had every intention of finishing my degree, graduating from seminary, and becoming a Presbyterian minister.
Gaining knowledge is a vital part of our sojourn in mortality. In Doctrine and Covenants 88 and again in section 109, we are commanded, “Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom, seek learning, even by study and also by faith.” But the study of ancient Near East religions holds traps for the unwary. If our faith is weak, we can easily fall into those traps.
As I delved more deeply into my studies, I learned there were tales of virgin births and dying and rising gods that predated the Bible. I know now that those stories foreshadowed the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ, but at the time they confirmed my belief that the Bible couldn’t be taken literally. I was certain the fantastic stories in its pages were myths, legends, and half-truths compiled by ancient writers to promote belief in a God whose nature they had distorted to control the people with awe and fear.
If my scholarly studies confirmed my doubts about religious texts and doctrines, they didn’t discourage me from following the call to serve. As I moved farther along that path, I discovered that some working ministers shared my disbelief but continued to serve God’s people. The desire to serve often seemed divorced from belief, if not from faith in God.
I found much value in the Bible in spite of my skepticism. I especially loved the prophet Amos, with his fierce cry for social justice. I wrote a paper about Amos and adapted it for a talk from the pulpit. I served as a substitute preacher several times when our pastor was away and found the response very gratifying. Trying to express my broader view of God, I wrote the following prayer and delivered it from the pulpit.
Prayer for a Divided World
O God, you are infinite and eternal. Your ways are far beyond our human understanding. You embrace all creation in your boundless love. We cannot comprehend such all-encompassing love, so we turn away from you and from one another in fear and ignorance.
O God, erase mistrust from our hearts and misunderstanding from our minds. Wipe away the fog of separateness through which we view ourselves, using it as an excuse to reject those we see as different and therefore outside the circle of your favor. Forgive us, O God, for continually trying to squeeze you into narrow boxes of our own making, for falsely attributing to you our own intolerance. Open our eyes and let us see that we are — every one of us — your beloved children.
Gracious God, these things we ask, trusting fully in your loving wisdom, opening ourselves to knowing that we are truly part of you. Knowing this, can we ever turn our backs on you, or on each other, again?
Amen.
In January of 2004, while my mother was fighting a losing battle with the cancer that would take her life less than a year later, David’s doctors discovered a ninety-five percent blockage in one of his carotid arteries. While I worried that he might have a massive stroke at any moment, the doctors took their time deciding how to treat the blockage. Stents had never been used in the carotid artery, but official approval came while we were waiting and worrying. The procedure was set for about a week away.
While I was worrying about David and my mother, one day at work I started having chest pains and could barely catch my breath. My co-workers called an ambulance to take me to the hospital. What felt like a heart attack turned out to be a panic attack. They kept me overnight for observation and then released me. I felt guilty for making David worry about me when he was the one whose life was in danger.
While in the hospital, I wrote two prayer-poems, modeling them after the Psalms.
New Psalm One
Day and night, in all things, I wait on the goodness and mercy of my Lord, Who knows my every need And supplies it with abundance, Who knows every prayer of my heart And answers with His bounteous grace, Who sees my tears and sheds His own, Who hears my laughter and smiles. I will praise God’s name forever.
New Psalm Twenty-Three
The Lord of love is my guide. I need no other. His loving-kindness brings me peaceful rest. He calms the raging waters of my soul. Along paths of light and wisdom, I follow in my Lord’s footsteps. Though harm and even death may threaten, In God’s presence I am not afraid. God’s laws are my truth, And God’s words my lifeline. Doubt and distrust may assail me on all sides, But I am safe at my Lord’s table, Where I am honored and comforted Far beyond my worth. Surely God’s astonishing gifts are mine always, And the door of His kingdom is open to me forever.
After David finally got his carotid stent to join the four coronary stents he already had, I flew to Texas to help my mother recover from a last-ditch effort to slow the cancer’s growth. The powerful chemicals pumped directly into a tumor growing on her liver had made her so ill that they had to stop the chemotherapy and admit her to the hospital.
She was in the hospital for nine days and I spent a good deal of that time at her bedside. One day, with tears in her eyes and a catch in her voice, my mother recounted stories of hurt from her childhood nearly eight decades before. I was astonished. She was eighty years old, and she still harbored pain and resentment from events that had happened when she was a child.
That explained a lot about my mother. She had always given an impression of strength, and in my early adulthood, I wanted to be just like her. But what appeared as strength turned out to be a brittle determination to present herself as an independent woman, capable and courageous. Outwardly, she was those things, but later it became apparent that her brave facade concealed a soul in torment. Every loss and hurt of her life — those childhood hurts, her first husband’s death, her failed second marriage, her youngest child’s mental illness — had accumulated in her heart, overwhelming her with grief and pain.
Recently, thinking about all the trouble caused by old hurts, I wrote this poem:
Wounded Hearts
Of all the hurts the human heart can hold, The sharpest are the hurts we felt of old. When those we loved, who should have held us dear, Instead made us to sorrow and to fear. The scars we bear are thus so deep and broad, No one can understand except our God. He sent His Son to bleach the darkest stain, To take away our sorrow and our pain. If we accept the price He gladly paid, The wounds that scar our hearts begin to fade, And from that moment we can start to live, If we but find the courage to forgive.
Mom had joined the Church when she married my stepfather, but she’d never gained a true testimony. Unresolved resentment and pain tainted her life. She built a wall around her heart to protect it from hurt, but when you try to seal out pain, you also seal out joy. Over the years Mom lost her capacity for joy. In trying to protect herself and her schizophrenic son, she withdrew from life, almost becoming a hermit, insular and bitter.
Ten months after Mom’s hospitalization, in one of Heavenly Father’s myriad tender mercies, my mother finally stopped blaming Him for her sorrows. A few days before she died I was reading her a Mark Twain story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” when Mom interrupted me. “You know, Mark Twain blamed God for the death of his family,” she said, “but God doesn’t do that.” Nearing her own death, she had come to a better understanding of the loving nature of our Heavenly Father.
Only my sister Lynne, Mom’s youngest sister, and I were present during her final hours. My schizophrenic brother stayed in his room, refusing to believe his seemingly indomitable mother was dying. Before she lapsed into a coma, and after she had been agitated and incoherent for a time, Mom suddenly relaxed, smiled, and said clearly, “There’s Daddy. There’s Mama. There’s Wayne.” Her parents and my father had come to escort her home.
In spite of those epiphanies of grace, my mother crossed the veil carrying a heavy load of pain, resentment, and guilt. A few months after she died, a secret she had kept from her children for fifty years came to light.
After my father died, Mom took a job at the airline where he had been employed as a pilot and became involved with a married man who had been my father’s friend. Mom must have thought he’d leave his wife and marry her, but that didn’t happen, even after Mom got pregnant. She managed to conceal her pregnancy from us until she went away for a few weeks. We were told she was tired and needed a vacation, and our grandparents stayed with us while our mother gave birth to a baby boy at a home for unwed mothers and put him up for adoption.
When my siblings and I finally found out about this, we discovered that everyone else in the family had known all along. Mom had said she’d told us, and no one ever talked about the family scandal.
Lynne hired an adoption tracer to find our secret brother, who was born when I was ten. Raised an only child by loving parents, he was shocked to learn he had six half-siblings. My plans to go visit him were put on hold by another family crisis, but we keep in touch on social media and I look forward to meeting him in person someday.
Learning that my mother gave away a baby and kept that secret from her second husband and her other children for fifty years added to my understanding of her pain. Half a century of guilt and secrecy, worrying that any day someone might let it slip, must have added several layers of cement to the wall around her heart.
Whenever I start thinking my life has been hard, I look at my mother’s and know it could have been much harder. We both rejected the Church and the concept of a personal God, each for our own reasons. I was able to turn around and make it all the way back during my mortal probation; my mother wasn’t. Her path to repentance and forgiveness has been longer and harder than mine, but I know she has walked it. I know she has been washed clean, and that she watches over her children from the other side of the veil with pure and anxious love, looking forward to that glorious day when we’ll meet again. The story of how I know these things will have to wait for a later chapter.
Memoirs of a Prodigal Daughter 