What a beautiful testimony from someone who has come to know the power of the Atonement and the Book of Mormon so intimately: "In recovery, I eventually had a living experience with this reality that changed my mindset and my heart forever. As I kept studying the Gospel in the light of these twelve true principles, I was restored to the sanity of knowing–truly knowing–that I am a beloved child of Heavenly Parents who want me, and who are, even now, in the process of training me, preparing me to inherit all that They have and–even more exciting to me–to become all that They are."
I used to think that reading the scriptures was just one more thing to DO and check off my “I’m-Trying-SOOO-Hard-to-be-a-GOOD-Person” list. But, then, my weaknesses and the weaknesses of others broke me in two. No, better put, mortality shattered me into pieces–a million pieces.
Putting my life, my sanity even, back together would have been like trying to reconstruct a ship as the wreckage floats off in all directions. That was what my life was like when I began this in-depth search of the Book of Mormon in the late 1980s. This was no “casual” effort to keep up with a reading schedule. This was the slow, pondering study of someone looking for an antidote for malaria, a cure for their own spreading cancer.
At that point, I knew I had to find God on a gut-deep, heart-deep, walking-talking-counseling, personal revelation basis, or I was going to spin right off the planet, much less right out of the Church. Everyone and everything I had believed in and participated in as part of the outward structure and appearances of the Mormon way of life had not been able to stop the devastation of watching addiction in various forms destroy my first marriage and lead the majority of my children away from the Church I love.
That was when I started reading the Book of Mormon as if my very life depended on it.