By Kelly Quinn

An earlier version of this reflection was read as an audio essay for “Matters of the Heart,” a subset of the Mormon Matters Podcast in which listeners record stories or personal essays related to podcast topics. (See www.mormonmatters.org.) This essay is printed here with the author’s permission.

Tonight, the Prodigal Son is returning. He is baptizing his wife and best friend into a church they discussed in AA meetings as kids not even twenty years old. Members of his childhood ward are gathering in the old ward building—the building where one night he poured a glass of water over another boy’s head because he didn’t like him and because he didn’t know how to resolve conflict gracefully.

The Prodigal Son’s parents never thought they would see this day. And neither did the Elder Daughter.

As the Elder Daughter, it has always been my responsibility to be the one my parents could count on. Prodigal Son wrecked half the kitchen trying to cook a homemade cherry bomb on the stove, but Elder Daughter graduated from high school with honors and started taking honors comparative literature at BYU. After my parents bailed Prodigal Son out of yet another crisis, they could call Elder Daughter to hear about college life. How many people can you share your Prodigal Son’s drug addiction and rehab experiences with? Not very many—at least not comfortably. But you can tell anyone that Elder Daughter is studying in Paris for a semester.

However, being the Elder Daughter and living in the dynamics of Prodigal Brother and Stressed-Out Parents started to take its toll. I felt that my life was shaped around my brother’s. For instance, I remember sitting at the breakfast table in a Paris hostel with my parents, my mother constantly pressing me to talk about Prodigal Brother. Even half a planet away, it seemed I couldn’t escape him.

When I got back from Paris, I hit a phase where I just wanted to date and socialize—and date I did. But I fell for the wrong kind of guy—one who was battling his own demons of addiction and who could not provide the kind of Mormon life and marriage I wanted so very much.

We broke up a week before Thanksgiving, and it was by far the most painful experience of my life. I came home for that holiday hurting and raw. As I walked in the door, I started crying. I choked out my experience to Prodigal Brother, and he gently held me for a few moments as if I were a delicate china doll. He didn’t need to verbalize his own experiences from prodigal life for me to know that he understood my pain. Even though he and I weren’t close, I knew he had gone through a few heartbreaks himself. I actually didn’t see much of him after that. After he and his girlfriend ate Thanksgiving dinner, they quickly left.

My breakup marked the beginning of a long battle with feelings of intense, bitter jealousy of other people’s blissful relationships, especially their temple marriages. I lived in Salt Lake City where I worked with several girls my age and younger who were enjoying their new husbands and always wearing these damned diamond rings. I had fought so hard for a temple wedding with my old boyfriend but had lost spectacularly. I had no sense of direction or purpose without a significant other.

The spring after that brief Thanksgiving meal, Prodigal Brother announced that he and his girlfriend were going to get married in two weeks. I flew home to watch the small yet gracious ceremony in my parents’ backyard. The bride arrived in a red, glittery formal dress. The bishop married the couple under a small canopy, and we had a nice dinner with cake. Prodigal Brother and his new bride went home with the bride’s parents, with whom they lived. Sometime during the day, my grandmother whispered to me, “This is not the kind of wedding you want.”

Maybe not. But where was my wedding? I had done everything right. I was trying to be righteous. I was active in the Church. I worked to be attractive, kind, and open to others. I knew on one level that living an active LDS lifestyle and accessing the Atonement doesn’t guarantee a bunch of flashy, external trophy blessings to show off—like a gorgeous spouse and kids—but a deeper part of me did believe it and insisted that I deserved those blessings. You know the part of the Prodigal Son story where the Elder Son asks his dad, “Where is my fine robe? Where is my ring?” Boy, did that speak to me. I really, really, really wanted a wedding ring.

These feelings came to a head when Prodigal Brother announced that his best friend, with whom he had experimented with drugs and alcohol in high school, wanted to be baptized. Prodigal Brother’s wife also wanted to join. All I could think was, “What the hell, Heavenly Father? I don’t even get to be the first to have a temple wedding? That deal was mine!”

On the evening of the baptism, I showed up at the church building emotional and raw. Old family friends, many of whom had witnessed the trauma my parents had lived through with Prodigal Brother, were trickling into the Relief Society room. This was the kind of night that General Authorities speak about with reverence from the podium. But I didn’t really know how to be happy for my brother. It just felt like a cosmic slap in the face. My mother took one look at me and told me to go sort myself out.

I hid out in a dark bathroom on the opposite side of the building, my face pressed pathetically into the wall, my hands clutching the paper towel dispenser. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for these feelings of jealousy to go away. I can’t say that peace instantly swept through me, but I was able to calm down, wipe off my running mascara, and walk back through the building to join my family.

I vividly remember my brother raising his tattooed arm to the square and giving the baptismal prayer for his best friend. As I stood watching, I felt something rare: a kind of burning in my bosom. My heart was swelling, and the Spirit was whispering to me, teaching my heart how to make more room for Prodigal Brother, his wife, and their best friend. We returned to the Relief Society room, and the little clutch of former degenerates sat on the front row together, the three of them bent over one hymnal, silently following. I started crying; not because I felt God had forsaken me—the clear evidence being my ringless left hand—but because God’s Spirit was visiting with me, cleansing me, and teaching me how to be more loving.

When I left the church building that evening, I no longer felt like Elder Daughter. I just felt like myself—a happier self with a new appreciation of miracles.

I’m not that much closer to my brother today than I was a few years ago. He’s still difficult to know, and we only talk a few times a year. I’m not even sure what his relationship to the Church is these days. But the air between us is clearer. It’s friendlier. I feel like we have more potential for a healthy relationship. And I think that’s pretty significant.

By the way, a few months after those baptisms, I started dating the man who would become my husband. How’s that for a trophy blessing?