Disrupting the Narrative: Momentum-Shifting Moments No One Anticipated
What is it that leads a narrative critical of the Church that people previously felt entrenched in, to become disrupted fundamentally?
As illustrated in the previous section, it’s common for those stepping away from the Church of Jesus Christ to find themselves in a place of intensely negative convictions about the Church – with return experienced as almost inconceivable.
An object that stays in motion stays in motion – and so does an active narrative in our lives – unless that moving force is acted upon by a force moving in the other direction.
That’s what happened with Alma the Younger. And Paul. And every one of the accounts we reviewed as well, in both small and dramatic ways.
Although less glitzy, we witness in these accounts a wide range of disruptive moments that seem equally consequential and transformative in many people’s lives – no doubt, also involving equally direct and sacred intercessions from the other side.
It’s true, these moments can also be “small and simple” too. Starting with something as simple as feeling loved. In some cases, even subtle and quiet sensations appear to have as much force as an angel standing before one’s bed.
Not everyone had powerfully disruptive moments initially – nor perhaps does everyone appear to need them. In some cases, awareness appears to shift more gradually – comparable to those who speak of their testimony gradually developing, without any singular moments. Even those with more disruptive, sudden beginnings of such a change, of course, enter into a more gradual process afterwards – as illustrated in the next section.
The details perhaps matter less than what results from these moments. In each instance, what had previously been an indisputable narrative with seemingly unstoppable force gets disrupted and the trajectory of the subsequent account completely changes.
A DIVERSITY OF DISRUPTORS
DISRUPTIVE PAIN AND TRAGEDY
The potential of painful experiences to alter life is familiar to all of us. Natural disaster, health problems and death all prove consequential in the evolutions of all of our narratives – including these we reviewed. Don Bradley spoke of his 25-year old brother’s unexpected death as upending his world. Although his views of the afterlife at the time “were sketchy and uncertain,” he “couldn’t imagine never reconnecting with the brother he adored.” He went on to say:
I was drawn to the only hope I could see that Charles, not just some aspect of him, but my brother, would live on: the hope of resurrection. Re-examining the claim of Christ’s resurrection, I … became persuaded that God had raised Christ.
One sister reviewed her declining health, which ultimately prompted shifts in her perspective.
It started out with small strange symptoms that quickly snowballed into a drowning of overwhelming darkness. I truly felt like I was dying 24/7. I didn’t sleep—muscles burning and constant panic attacks left me feeling completely brain dead. Doctors couldn’t find anything wrong on my blood tests, but I knew that something was seriously wrong.
After her desperation prompted some opening to alternative approaches, she started to see improvements: “Looking back I now recognize where angels and God were directing me towards my path of healing.” Although she found herself “better in some areas but worse in others” this was an excruciating time, where she wrote: “I had entered a dark place I didn’t know existed, and I frequently considered suicide. It was here that I had to dig deep to find faith in something bigger than me. I needed God to be real.” (6)
Letitia recounted, “I was diagnosed with kidney cancer, and I remember it very distinctly. I had to tell my son which was really traumatic. He took it really badly. He was about eighteen, or nineteen, and he took it really badly. I can remember coming out of his bedroom, after trying to calm him down and reassure him it was all going to be okay, and coming back into my living room, sitting down on the sofa, and for the first time in twenty years saying a little prayer, ‘please, let this be a promise that I can keep to my son that I’m going to be okay’. So I just felt an overwhelming sense of peace and love and knew it was going to be okay.”
Letitia described her cancer diagnosis as the Lord saying, “Okay. Let’s do something to make sure that she walks through that door.” She continued, “that’s when I knew I had to come back to church. I needed that strength. I needed something to get me through this. I mean, my family and friends were amazing, but I needed something. I needed it. I needed my Heavenly Father. I needed my Savior, and I can tell you that I felt Him with me every step of the way; giving me strength and courage, and I thought, “You know, things are going to turn out quite differently.” So, that made me walk through the door. (39)
The general pain of her life since leaving the Church also moved Rachel Bodily to a place of openness to further shifts in her view of the Church. As she related:
During our 10 year absence from the Church, we made disgraceful life choices together that tore apart our family, stimulated deep pain and trauma for ourselves and our children, and brought me to the point of constant suicidal thoughts with a severe lack of self worth. For a year, my life was in utter darkness. I refer to this time of life as a living hell. I use that term within the exact definition. As Alma the younger, my heart and soul were wracked consistently with internal torment and I was harrowed up almost daily by my sins.
She continued, “The only answer I could find was to end my own life” but added, “My only saving grace at that time was knowing the anguish I would cause my children by doing so. Especially after my painful childhood experience with the death of my own father.” Rachel said what happened next, “I had hidden from my extended family what was actually going on in my life. My life became so dark and so desperate, I finally turned to a brother who I wasn’t very close to at the time, and confided in him my suffering.” (15)
As her later story illustrates, these connections with her brother proved consequential. Sometimes the tragedy nudges someone towards greater openness. And sometimes it sets the stage for a sacred moment that shakes someone to the core. Tami Havey recollects her alarm after seeing news that a large storm had hit Idaho – given the damage to her parents’ home in Rexburg, while they were out serving a mission. When she got the news of the flood, she remembers “screaming and crying because she was so angry” voicing “How could God do this to my family? My dad was a mission president; how could He do this?”
It’s in that moment of frustration, however, that Tami reported “a wave of peace” washing over her: “I knew then that only good would come of this flood. It was the first time that I had felt the Spirit or anything like that in a very long time.” (2)
DISRUPTIVE MIRACLES AND OPPORTUNITIES
As has been the case throughout sacred history, unexplainable events can prompt similar disruptions in narrative. Just as tragic moments prompted change, positive experiences and unexpected blessings also served as a catalyst to disrupt these narratives. When experiencing these new and happy moments, these people allowed themselves to reconsider and question their decision to leave.
As part of his story of an unwanted missionary visit that first touched him, Dusty Smith recounted: “They gave me the blessing. I was healed right then. I got out of bed and walked them down the stairs.” After this exchange, Smith felt shaken and reawakened to the possibility of returning to the Church. With a tone of apparent shock he said, “I hit my knees.”
Sometimes it’s a stream of even less dramatic miracles that make a difference. In Dusty’s account, he also mentions his wife getting a promotion to Salt Lake City – right after he had joked with his one Latter-day Saint friend: “if God really wants me to be LDS again, He will send her to Salt Lake” (3)
Peka Holmes spoke of how the experience of having a baby pressed her to reconsider her previous interpretations: “it wasn’t until Matt and I started talking about having children that I kind of stepped back and evaluated my life and said, ‘Am I living the kind of life that Heavenly Father would bless me with a child?’ This moment of “want[ing] a child so badly” led her to stop – with “the motivation of having a child and having a family” leading her to ask herself some new questions: “how am I going to raise my family? Am I living a life that sets an example to children of ours?” As she put it, “And I was definitely not.” (19)
Olivia Foo Fung Leung Luk described a reflective, everyday moment that wasn’t “drastic,” but which “caused me to re-think the importance of the gospel in my life.” She recounted, “As usual, I took my sons to catch the school bus to go to school. On the side of the road there were two teenagers fighting against each other. There was broken glass all over on the ground.” She remembers asking herself in that moment, “Will my sons behave as they are?” Alongside her worry, she had a flood of thoughts come to mind, she described hearing a voice that said, “Bring them to church. Bring them to church.” (16)
In recounting a time of her family life that was happy – and with a great teaching job, Pam Shorr described her nine year old coming to her one day and saying, “Mom, a lot of my friends go to church. Why don’t we go to church?”
Pregnant with another child at the time, Pam “started getting these strong feelings about going back to church, too” (18).
DISRUPTIVE INSIGHTS
Similar to the impact of unexplainable events, sometimes the introduction of fresh ideas that press someone to see something anew have a significant influence. This includes insights that couldn’t simply be explained in the previously held narrative framework. For instance, after disavowing his faith after embracing a secular narrative of Latter-day Saint origins, Don Bradley describes reading an argument by a prominent atheist to explain the improbability of the earth’s creation. “I’d thought the chance of a universe fitted for life was something like one in a billion” Don notes, but “the reality was more like one in 10 to the 200th power.”
After reading this other man argue that “the constants of the universe were shaped by our distant descendants, who engineered the collapsing universe to restart,” Don asked himself, “He thinks this is more likely than God?”
Compared to previous experiences that had disrupted his earlier faith, he remarks that this “moment was as shattering to his unbelief as [earlier] questions had been to his LDS faith.”
Don went on to encounter parts of Church history that just didn’t make sense in his anti-Mormon narrative – an interesting reverse of the way the narrative usually goes. He notes, “I could describe many of the events of Joseph Smith’s life, but I couldn’t explain the thing that really mattered: why it all worked. Joseph Smith wasn’t of interest because he’d been a merchant, a mayor, or even a much-married husband, but because he was the founder of a religion. And it was precisely the religious dimension I couldn’t account for.”
It’s striking to see his honesty about parts of his story that didn’t make sense. This initial insight started a new chain of realizations, including confronting his tendency to “overthink things” and being more honest with himself about his own self-selecting biases. As one journalist summarized: “While looking for reasons to believe that Smith was an opportunist after money, sex and power, Bradley found a number. But when he sought examples of how the [Joseph] benefited others and served religious purposes, he found even more.”
That prompted Don to “re-embrace Smith, not in a simplified way but as a complicated man capable of revealing God’s messages to the world.” As he put it:
The questions we ask largely determine the kinds of answers we find. I had pushed the cynical interpretation as far as it could go, tried to explain as much as I could using that model, only to find the model ultimately deficient. It could not explain the spiritual power of Joseph Smith and of the faith he founded. … I have no doubt, on historical grounds alone, that Joseph Smith is vastly bigger than the cynical caricature of him and that he was a sincere seeker after truth and a magnanimous soul. (5)
Compared to insights that challenge one’s critical view of the Church, other insights confirm a prior positive view in a surprising way. After “stay[ing] hidden for 26 years,” Elaine Rushing describes wanting to find a Church with her loving husband and 11-year-old child at the age of 40:
We started at the Episcopal Church and that was my awakening. I started with the Bible study class and everything I had learned so long ago came rushing back. As I talked scripture with the group, they thought I was a preacher’s daughter. I told them I had received the Holy Ghost at eight from my father. I understood Isaiah. I talked about the home/visiting teaching program. They thought I was incredibly knowledgeable. I knew what revelation was about in that moment. (12)
Tina Richerson came to a similar cognitive and spiritual reawakening by encountering a non-Christian faith. As she recounts, “My mom was also really sick with cancer at that time too. So, I started to redevelop my spiritual side through Zen Buddhism and through music. So, I just sunk deeper into music and my spirituality which was really powerful and wonderful. Buddhism is actually what brought me back to the church.” She continues:
I was reading a book by Thích Nhất Hạnh, who is one of my favorite Zen Buddhist authors, called Living Buddha, Living Christ. In the book, he talks about the jewels of our traditions and how important it is to accept our own tradition. He says, “When we respect our blood ancestors and spiritual ancestors, we feel rooted. If we can find ways to cherish and develop our spiritual heritage we will avoid the kind of alienation that is destroying society and we will become whole again. We must encourage others, especially young people, to go back to their traditions and rediscover the jewels that are there. Learning to touch deeply the jewels of our own tradition will allow us to understand and appreciate the values of other traditions and this will benefit everyone.” And when I read this I was so struck knowing that I had to go back to my tradition, to my Mormon tradition. I was like, oh, crap! Really? This information sat inside of me for about six months before I had the courage to go back to church, to be whole again, but I knew I had to do it. (20)
In each case, these moments provided for individuals a new glimpse – a peak – at another way to make sense of it all: both their past struggles, and their present possibilities.
DISRUPTIVE HUNGER AND ATTRACTION
As we can see, sometimes new insights emerge directly about one’s old faith. Other times, people speak of an awareness that grows (or hits them) concerning, more directly, their own life and the present life being led. For instance, Rosanne Hersee describes coming to recognize how bad she felt. In her words, she was: “wandering lost in the dark, my heart aching for the sort of joy and spirit I had felt in our church. There was nothing I could find that filled the hole left in my life.” Despite for seeking that fulfillment and nutrition elsewhere, she admitted:
In no other church could I find the depth of knowledge I had gained in our church…Neither did I find in the other churches the same feeling of love, support and brotherhood and the same degree of adherence to gospel teachings such as keeping the Sabbath holy…The very nature of God and the Godhead and the Plan of Salvation seemed to be understood very little or very fuzzily. In short, the other churches I visited didn’t have the same sort of fullness of the gospel. (29)
Another woman spoke of Facebook anniversary messages coming up that reminded her of previous testimony she had posted online. And she said, “it hit me. Wow, I felt really strongly about this. I seemed so happy compared to now – so miserable, lonely, not happy, my life is not good right now.” She continued “I can’t put into words how lonely, sad, depressed, miserable I was…”
That awareness brought not only a perspective, but also a new conviction and fresh determination: “I want it all gone, I want to move forward. I want to make changes. I don’t want this – I hate the way that I feel. I read how I used to feel when I was strong and active – and that person who wrote those things is not the same person as now. And I don’t like who I am now.”
Tom Christofferson also describes a growing sense of something missing in his life, despite having followed what he wanted most:
My partner and I had a wonderful life, and we had been together about 12 years at that point. But there was a deeper element and a spirituality that I wanted to have in my life that I didn’t feel, and so after we moved [to New Canaan, Connecticut], I felt like I wanted to attend church. That was where I had felt the Spirit in the past, and it was where I felt I would be able to have those feelings again. (41)
Brenna Kelley similarly described “slowly…start[ing] to notice something was missing” – what she described as the “closeness”: “I had friends, cool roommates, a fun club, good grades… but I was missing something. When I prayed that night in April, I knew what it was. I needed a relationship with my Heavenly Father.”
When she ventured to try a prayer after a long while, Brenna says what happened next: “I knew after a few small words that I felt the Spirit, that there was a divine being who cared about me and loved me, and that I needed to rejoin the LDS church” (35)
Continuing the pattern of paradigm shifts, Jamie Pon described her experience: “I thought I would be happier and have more freedom by not going to church, but in fact I felt the opposite way. Unhappiness still surrounded me.” When asked if she was “happier than [she] was before, [her] answer was ‘No.’” (21)
Like Enos, many of these people hinted at moments where they said “my soul hungered.” As they began to fully realize that their lives outside of the Church were not as free or as happy as they had expected, a new awareness of their own truer, deeper desire emerges.
Kevin Anderson described “a dark horrible winter” during his time away from the Church when he was injured skiing. He continued, “something somewhere in that winter of my discontent I woke up and went ‘what am I doing? I’m miserable. I’m not happy.’ I had a girlfriend at the time and it just wasn’t working. I didn’t feel good spending time with her. I didn’t feel good just sitting around the house, and it felt like I didn’t have any direction. I didn’t feel happy inside. The choices I was making didn’t make my body feel good, or didn’t make me … nothing worked and it was just there…I was just like– you know what I’m done.”
With that realization, he described packing up and leaving his previous situation motivated by the thought, “Hey, I want something better.” New prayers and other efforts emerged from this “catalyst” moment when he concluded, “I’m sick of this.” (38)
Christian Mawlam similarly wrote about reaching a time when the party life didn’t “float my boat” and that he “didn’t like who I was becoming – self-centered, sarcastic” – as well as “adrift, lacking purpose” (40).
Elder Maxwell had promised parents in Christian’s stake that for their youth who were wandering from the faith, “the things of the world that they find attractive won’t be sweet anymore.” And that’s precisely what happened to Christian.
We see here a progression of people gradually sensing and feeling what is missing, before eventually putting words to it – which prompts more clarity about what they want to do. As this new distinction becomes clear in terms of their desires and what’s going on inside, it creates a new choice point. Even though she had a wonderful family life, Leticia described going out with friends and being like, “I really don’t want to be here. Why am I not enjoying this, I’d rather go home, I don’t really want to be in this atmosphere.”
She continued, “What is it that I’m looking for? What am I missing? Because…I wasn’t really completely happy. I wasn’t at peace. I wasn’t enjoying it. It wasn’t giving me anything, don’t get me wrong–I love my friends, and I enjoy spending time with them, but I was feeling like there was something missing from my life.” (39)
Christiane Woerner recollected a time of continuing to “make poor choices about who I was intimate with” – admitting, “Overall, I found my intimate relations to be empty and unfulfilling” – which set the stage for what came next.
While some people feel a loss – a hunger for something they are missing – others similarly report a draw towards something that feels newly attractive. Chrisiane continues, “After landing my dream job, I moved to a new town. At that same time, there was a temple open house that my mother invited me to. Inside the temple, I felt the Lord’s love for me – the Holy Spirit I was given when I was eight began to grow.” (14)
Whether inspired by external or internal disruptors, this sense of heightened awareness prompted for many a new ability to see and appreciate the beauty of their past–their childhood, their previous faith.
More than losing an attraction for his previous life, Christian likewise admitted something else new emerging, “What my parents had when I was a little person was just lovely.” (40) Another woman similarly describes watching her friend come out of the temple after being married, and saying, “I need this, I need this. Drove to temple and balling” as she felt a “burning desire” come to receive these same blessings in her life.
But why does all this feeling of longing emerge? After acknowledging his own difficulty “feeling the sense of belonging and purpose [I] once had in the church,” Joel Tippets admitted wondering “if the reason you felt all these things was simply because you had been brainwashed by a cult.” But then, he continued:
You have a childhood memory of you sitting next to your mom on the couch, looking at illustrated scriptures, being excited to get to read the next page; the fuzzy memory of your young mom who was much younger than you are now. You know her love was sincere. You know she was loving and teaching you in the best way she knew how.You remember the seminary or institute teacher that really reached you. The excitement to learn. The way it made you want to be kind to your siblings and everyone around you. The skills of seeking personal revelation that could change everything. That moment while you were studying when you thought, “rather than feeling sorry for myself that my pregnant wife doesn’t want to have sex, what can I do to help her be more comfortable?” And you were filled with love for her. You remember that friend you escorted through the temple. That family. You didn’t know anything about masonry and gruesome symbolic penalties and whatever else. You just saw some beautiful friends with tears of joy, matching your own.
Joe summarized: “These were good things. Very good things. Things that you no longer have. You miss them. You sometimes sense that empty feeling in your gut, knowing you can’t unlearn what you know. You miss innocence.”
At a very low moment in his life, Kevin described being welcomed into a Latter-day Saint home to live on their couch for a few weeks – and returning there often afterwards. He continues:
I can distinctly remember walking into that house maybe the second, or third, time and just stopping for a minute going “Wow!” These people treat their kids like adults. They’re all friends. They’re full of energy. They’re all doing crazy things. They’re all just busy and engaged and just really great people. And up to that point, I’d never I never seen an LDS Family that just had this kind of engagement level and all this love amongst them and this report that was just so healthy and kind and loving and wonderful and whatever other good words there are. So, it was kind of like a ‘DING’ this bell goes off and I was like ‘WOW’ that’s really cool.’ (38)
However consequential the emerging insights were for each person, it’s worth noting how non-dramatic each of these experiences are – emerging, as they did, in the unfolding of people’s very “normal” experiences. While that is often the case, these same kinds of major insights and emerging senses of attraction or hunger can also be paired with some of the more dramatic narrative-disrupting events described earlier. Robyn Burkinshaw, for instance, writes of her father’s rapid decline in health and subsequent death – prompting, as it did, a hasty family reunion which pressed her to see something new: “My brother had driven from Oklahoma where he was living at the time and there was a peace to him that I didn’t have. He had an understanding—I understood it but I don’t think I had a testimony of it. I think the fear overwhelmed me.”
She continued: “To watch the difference between my brother’s response to my dad’s passing and the rough tide that was just raging in me, was pretty significant….I think that started the serious journey.” (7)
Along with these emergent attractions to what they see around them, others acknowledge a “pull” that can emerge inside. Dusty, for instance, spoke of recognizing a deeper sense of being drawn back: “I started to feel a pull to come back.” But after attending church a few times, he still wrestled with feeling like he could belong to the Church again, as he reflected on the pain he perceived at the time it had brought into his life. “But he could not shake that pull from the Spirit” (3)
While that ‘pull’ sometimes comes as a spiritual impression, it can also come in human form. Kristi Novac describes a day when her 13-year old daughter “came to me, looked me straight in the eye, and said that she wanted to try going back to the LDS church—and that she wanted me to come with her.” She continues, “We talked about it, prayed about it, and decided that the Spirit was directing us to return to church. When I talked to my husband about it, he was not exactly excited, but he remembered the many times he had told our daughter that he would support whatever faith she chose. Now, he had to put that into practice!” (13)
As we’ve seen, narrative-disrupting moments need not be dramatic – angel-standing-before-me style. Sometimes just a recognition of what’s happening inside can awaken something. And sometimes it’s witnessing what’s happening with someone else that really appears to be what disrupts everything.
DISRUPTIVE EXAMPLES
Joe describes a moment that shook up everything – a day when he went to read an ex-Mormon forum like he had so many times before:
After work on March 5, 2019, I opened Facebook and recognized the name of the poster. A guy I knew growing up. It perked my interest. This private group is mostly inhabited by people who are questioning or have lost their faith in the Mormon Church. Many, like me, have voluntarily resigned. A few, like this poster, were excommunicated. The post was long. I was used to seeing these. Often, people going through a “crisis of faith” or a “faith transition” will write long narratives about their difficult personal experience. They’ll describe the frustration of trying to talk with believing family members or leaders who make them feel like they’ve sinned for asking legitimate questions or have no awareness of the issues they’re thinking about. They feel scared and isolated. After sharing very personal experiences, dozens of group members validate them with likes and encouraging comments.
This time was different, though: “Scanning through the words, it became apparent that this post was different. This person was preparing to return to the church by getting re-baptized. Full stop.”
Witnessing another person’s vivid change had an impact on Joe, different than just another general insight about history or his own life. These examples, then, constitute for us a separate category of narrative disruptors.
Although not remembering “the rest of the words or the reasons he gave for changing his mind after 10 years away from Mormonism,” this experience started a chain of other disruptive experiences.
Starting with, perhaps, the most disruptive experience of all.
DISRUPTIVE LOVE
And that’s when Joe described “God spoke to me.” As he put it, “what I’m calling ‘God’ instantly filled my whole consciousness. My emotions were heightened with a sensation of bliss. My thoughts were crystal clear. Two clear messages pressed on my mind:
- I am God. I am real. And I love you.
- It’s time to go back to church.”
As he summarized simply to ex-Mormon friends, “I’m returning to the Mormon Church because I believe God spoke to me and told me to. That’s the reason.”
Feeling profoundly loved is among the most disruptive experiences of all- be that from others around them, or from God directly. Indeed, as significant as the loving influence of family and friends may have been, perhaps the most significant nurturing experiences came when they felt an overwhelming sense of divine love coming directly from God.
Joe elaborated, “Scriptural stories talk about another way people find God. He finds them. Not because they’re worthy or have desire. He stopped Paul on the road to Damascus. He stopped the sons of Mosiah and Alma the younger. This is what happened to me. I just knew that I had felt God again and I had a sense that there was an important reason for my experience.I believe it was God and I believe his message to me was clear.”
Clear enough that he felt compelled to follow. As Joe put it, “I feel confident that the God of love is pointing me in a specific direction. It feels good to honor it” (34).
Sam Brown describes kneeling to pray over the sacrament during a time of acute spiritual angst in his life. As he pulled “the tiny drawer with the prayer card forward and began to recite the words I had heard hundreds of times before,” he recounts:
“Oh God . . . ” I fell mute. For the first time in memory, my mind was entirely clear of its restless inner voice. In that quiet, I felt the presence of another. That presence was real to me, though it seemed neither physical nor entirely verbal. The closest I could come at the time or since is the bare term love. Love without eroticism, without direction or restriction. That sense, that presence, overwhelmed my ability to speak. The taste of tears on my upper lip surprised me. I didn’t cry often, but I wasn’t embarrassed this time. After a long minute, I tried words again, “…the eternal Father.” An episode of peaceful tears punctuated each phrase from the sacramental prayer. After several eternal minutes, I mouthed the “amen,” opened my eyes, and stood up. My mother beamed, and most of the congregation looked unsettled, in a positive way. My brother and friends wept quietly beside me.
That single moment interrupted the flow of what had previously been an overwhelming spiritual burden – with the impact of this feeling of God’s love constituting a singular turning point. As he put it, “That experience launched me on a life of believing; atheism has not been an option for me since.” (4)
Kevin described another transformative moment where he was speaking with his sister about their deceased grandfather – and, as he put it, “for some reason the Lord decided that that time and that weird situation in the back of the car was a time for him to say ‘Hey, I’m here!’” As he elaborated, “I had a sacred experience where I just felt so much love and so much light and so much spirit…”
He continued, “It was my anchor point. It was like ‘hey I’m here. I’m here…You don’t have to guess anymore. I’m here.’” “That was a milestone.” Rather than just wander, Kevin says that feeling of ever-present love “gave me this thing to rely on all the time.”
A similar moment in Don Bradley’s early reconversion was so consequential that it couldn’t be explained away. As one friend of Don’s reflected: “He really believes that he’s experienced the presence of God. At one point in time, he tried to explain it away, but when he looked back, he saw that it was a miraculous event and he wasn’t going to reject it.” (5)
While such a transformative experience of God’s love can come during a normal, even routine moment, it’s sometimes once again extraordinary and challenging circumstances that provide a meaningful backdrop for it all. As noted earlier, Don’s experience with tragedy could be appreciated as setting the stage for his openness to having these kinds of new experiences.
Joe went on to describe the aftermath of his re-encounter with the divine, “On the evening after this experience with God, I was in shock” – even wondering a little if this was a blip on the radar: “I went to bed, wondering how I would feel the next day. Would this all seem like a bizarre emotional blip?”
He related, “I got up the next morning and it wasn’t as intense, but it felt like a warm blanket was wrapped around me as if to say, “Joe, I’m gonna walk with you for a little while until you feel sure this isn’t just some kind of mind game. I’m still here. I’m real. I love you. Now do what you need to do.” He adds, “When I said there were clear words pressing themselves in my mind, they were more like ideas from which the words formed. But the ideas were bigger than just the words” and noted, “This sensation stayed with me for about two weeks” (34)
Jamie Pon described a moment where a “special feeling” arose: “I felt as if someone patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘Everything will be alright. Don’t worry.’ I felt peace inside my heart and this calm and peaceful feeling swept my sadness away.” She continued, “At that time I did not recognize that the special feeling I had was from the Spirit.” (21)
While encounters with divine love and witness are so often the defining moments, the influential effect of caring often distills from human sources as well. Dusty Smith described a moment in 2009 when he was dreadfully ill with the swine flu, and his son brought two missionaries into his room who had just knocked on the door. Even when he asked them to leave, these elders offered to give him a blessing. Amidst a pandemic that had terrified the country, “Here were these two young strangers willing to love him, willing to bless him, willing to try to heal him, and it touched something inside him.” (3)
As reflected here, sometimes desperate circumstances are the backdrop for being touched by tangible love around you. Speaking of her brother, Rachel Bodily writes, “In my greatest moment of pain and desperation, I turned to him and his wife for help and solace and moved into their home with my children. I was broken in almost every way a person could be. I had been living with my boyfriend. I used cannabis illegally and smoked cigarettes daily to numb my pain. I drank alcohol, dressed immodestly and, most days, walked around in a consistent despondent, depressed stupor. All this didn’t stop them from bringing me into their home and loving me unconditionally.”
Her brother’s love extended beyond providing a space for her to live, though. As she continued:
During this time, my brother regularly questioned me on my current spiritual or religious beliefs. Over the past couple of years, I had been exploring atheism. This exploration was partly what sent me down my suicidal path. His interest at all in me and what I believed was enough for me to feel loved and that I had value. We spent many long days and nights researching and discussing my beliefs and questions on God and Jesus Christ. His wife, who has become my closest friend and confidant, sought opportunities to make me feel loved by inviting me to things that she hoped would get me out of my sorrow and despair. She took me to lunch with her friends, thought of movies I would like and asked me to watch them with her, sat and held me while I cried without judgment or guile. (15)
It’s not uncommon for people to describe interactions with priesthood leaders and other trusted mentors that shifted things. Haleigh Everts described a conversation with a stake president that “struck something in me” prior to return (1) And Leo Winegar highlights the day “about a year after [his] total collapse of faith,” when “an unexpected phrase suddenly popped into [his] head.” As he described it, “It sounded like a voice that clearly said, ‘Contact Steven Harper’ – a former teacher of his at BYU.” He recollects, “When I heard that voice, it was a strange moment for me because those words seemed to come out of nowhere” – adding, “my mind was filled with skeptical thoughts like, ‘You shouldn’t bother Dr. Harper,’ and, ‘He’s too important and too busy to talk to you,’ and, ‘He probably won’t give you a straight answer.’”
After pondering this all, Leo decided to email his old teacher sharing some of the concerns that had so ravaged his faith. He went on to describe what happened next:
The next day, I found Dr. Harper’s reply in my inbox. As I read, I not only felt his genuine love, humility, and honesty but his competence to answer my questions. In his email, Dr. Harper first confirmed a few facts of history and then detailed what he personally understood from the historical record. He didn’t try to coerce me to believe a certain way but asked if I was open to reexamining my assumptions about the facts. Was I assuming the worst about the characters and events in our history? If so, why?
That tender and humble response from his old professor prompted more self-examination from Leo:
Upon careful reflection, I started to realize that my assumptions had been heavily influenced by the cynical opinions I had been reading online. So, I began making a conscious effort to reexamine my assumptions. I started seeking greater balance in my research by studying the professional opinions of Church scholars like Dr. Harper. Over time, through a renewed effort at prayer and faithful study, my heart softened, my mind opened, the Spirit returned, and many good answers arrived.
He reflects on that moment now in retrospect:
Now, many years later, I recognize what happened to me in that pivotal moment of my faith journey. Instead of just sharing his testimony, Dr. Harper gave me what I needed most; scholarly defibrillation. This defibrillation provided such a tremendous shock to my mind and spirit that I was able to begin walking back toward faith. I’ll be forever grateful for the merciful hand that my Savior extended to me through my beloved friend, Dr. Steven Harper. (32)
While these kinds of experiences of love open and soften people, they also appear to do something else on occasion. Given the striking sense of guilt many carry about their past experience, many seem to have a need to be forgiven for doubting and a need for something or someone to give them permission to return.
BIRTHING SOMETHING NEW, IN MANY DIFFERENT WAYS
Tragedies, miracles, opportunities, insights, hunger, examples, and love. Each of these could understandably be seen as very different and distinct phenomena – except for this unifying fact: Every one of these kinds of experiences seems to tangibly prompt a dramatic shift of momentum in a story that seemed inevitably, forcefully fated to continue in the same direction.
Not everyone seems to need a dramatic paradigm shift in narrative anyway – with turning points often much more subtle. In some cases, for instance, just a bit of kindness seems to provide a gentle entré that more dramatic things cannot. It’s not uncommon to hear something like “I don’t know if there’s a specific turning point” (17).
In other cases, then, it’s not a single moment that is consequential – but a string of different kinds of disruptive moments. Thus, Don begins to have “shattering” intellectual discoveries leading up to the death of his brother, which is even more disruptive of his previous understanding. Tami’s own experience also involves a mixture of unfolding tragedy and a deeply felt sense of love from those around her (and above her).
To be clear, not everyone seems to have these kinds of powerfully disruptive moments initially – nor perhaps does everyone appear to need them. In some cases, awareness appears to shift more gradually – comparable to those who speak of their testimony gradually developing, without any singular moments. (Even those with more disruptive, noticeable beginnings of the process, of course, enter into a more gradual process afterwards – as illustrated in the next section).
Still, in other cases, there doesn’t seem to be an overriding ideological or conceptual narrative influencing someone’s distance – as much as a lifestyle pattern that moves them away. In that case, it’s not so much of a narrative disruption, as much as a disruption to that practical flow of life that prompts a progression of return. For example, after describing her family’s departure soon after her baptism, Tina Phillips admits always feeling “curious about going back but was too intimidated” (28).
Notice Tina stayed away because of her family, in this case – not simply because of a shift in interpretation. Consequently, it wasn’t a dramatic paradigm shifting moment that changed things for Tina Phillips – but instead, “an invitation to a trunk or treat activity” where “everyone was so kind” – all of which “gave us the comfort and courage we needed to go on Sunday. Where we experienced nothing but welcoming and kindness. That was a good start.” (28)
In short, it would also be easy to over-simplify the kinds of patterns described above. Indeed, some of these examples above are common and familiar enough to align with equally common and familiar things we say: ‘Oh yes, he had a tragedy occur in his life that softened him…she saw a miracle that opened her eyes…they felt loved by a member, or felt God’s love.’
But precisely this kind of familiarity may sometimes cause us to overlook and miss the profound unfolding happening before our very eyes: appreciating how and what exactly these kinds of events invoke inside someone’s mind and heart.
A birth of something new – and perhaps the early signal of the death of something else.
An old narrative, and its accompanying way of life.
To disrupt an old interpretive framework, of course – is not the same thing as rediscovering something new, which is the subject of our next section.
