Growing Up in the Church
I was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). While I don’t consider myself an active Mormon today, I was baptized in the Darlington Ward and stayed there until around age 10 or 11, when that ward closed. From then on, my family attended the Hartsville Ward. I remained involved until I was 19.
Growing up LDS came with structure and values I appreciated. The emphasis on goodness, kindness, and service resonated with me. Compared to the often confusing and cruel behavior I witnessed outside the church, it felt like a sanctuary.
But then something shifted.
A Moment at Camp That Changed Everything
However, I had an experience in Young Women’s Church camp when I was 13 that shifted how I saw the church. It didn’t help that a lot of unpleasantness was happening to people I cared about in my personal and school life. It was a confusing time with many, many things to process for a young, expanding mind.
Anyway, that particular experience at camp always occurred to me as a pivotal point in my belief system. For a 13-year old just wanting to trust the world, I felt that I couldn’t – not even in a church environment. My sister was at camp with me and she and I often stewed over the injustice we felt.
From Anger to Insight
As most writers, I love using writing as a cathartic process. I have been circling this story for many years, giving it the tentative title, “Sentenced”. It felt like more than just a journal entry for me to work through privately. At one time, I wanted to write it as a way of highlighting hypocrisy in order to release my young adult anger self-righteously.
I never could finish it that way. It felt trite. I got stuck and the story didn’t seem to want to go further and I didn’t want to force it to be what I wanted. I knew instinctively that there was more for me to uncover so I would know what the real story needed to be.
Many years of self-reflection later…
I opened the file for “Sentenced” and read it with fresh eyes. I realized that I felt really heavy reading it and that I also didn’t feel the anger or injustice that I once did. No one did anything intentionally hurtful. We were just human beings bumping up against each other in the way that we do. I decided to start revising the story and creating it in a way that was fun for me. From there, the ideas began popping and I was off.
What Sentenced Became
Sentenced is no longer a rant. It’s a surreal, funny, and heartfelt little journey through guilt, expectation, and otherworldly judgment. It’s about what happens when three teen girls find themselves facing cosmic consequences for things they don’t fully understand.
There’s a glow-y celestial visitor.
There are mosquito swarms and snack-cakes.
And underneath it all?
There’s a deeper question about how we measure goodness—and who gets to decide.
What to Read Sentenced?
It’s available on most ebook retailers.
If you enjoy:
- Stories that play with afterlife absurdity
- Coming-of-age tales with bite and heart
- A little weirdness (okay, maybe a lot)
You’ll probably love this one.