Three general conference messages have completely changed the trajectory of Cynthia's life.
Without these messages, Cynthia might not have found the path of healing and redemption through the love of the Savior and His Atonement.
That's because four years ago, on the anniversary of her temple sealing, Cynthia's life exploded. "The long and the short of it is that I had an affair; it lasted about five months," Cynthia says on a This Is The Gospelpodcast.
Cynthia says that after her husband found out about the affair, he wanted to make their marriage work. And so that very evening Cynthia and her husband were sitting in their bishop's office.
"I told him [the bishop] everything and it was really hard," Cynthia says. "But at the end, he asked me for my testimony. And I had to be honest and say that I didn't know if I had one."
Cynthia says she grew up in a home where she attended church meetings and was baptized at age eight, but she felt like she missed out on the building blocks of daily prayer, scripture study, and studying general conference talks. "I never felt God's love for me, for just me," Cynthia says.
But at that meeting, Cynthia's bishop challenged her to read the scriptures every day and to pray with her husband every day.
Over time, reading the scriptures every day became Cynthia's retreat and solace from the emotional anguish she says she constantly felt along with the pain she had caused her family, her husband, and another family.
"There was nowhere where I could go in this little town without being stared at, without being talked about, without people saying rude things to me," Cynthia says. "Even though there was a lot of people, so many people who were supportive, who tried to be understanding, and who tried let me know it wasn't over--it wasn't ended--that I was still a part of the community, but it was hard to walk around and see how many people I hurt."
But that solace Cynthia found in the scriptures, those moments of soothing comfort amid the turmoil and anguish in her life, were precious. And when her bishop asked Cynthia to listen to all the sessions of general conference, she grabbed her notebook she kept for her scripture study to take notes.
When she started watching general conference, something amazing happened. "Every single talk felt like it was directed at me," Cynthia shares. "It felt like they [Church leaders] were looking through the TV straight at me."
The first message that really impacted Cynthia was "We'll Ascend Together" from Sister Linda K. Burton, the former Relief Society general president, particularly the line, "Thee lift me and I’ll lift thee, and we’ll ascend together.”
"I started thinking about my marriage and how I expected [my husband] to leave because, why wouldn't he?" Cynthia says. "And he wasn't leaving. He was staying with me . . . and I realized he was lifting me at the moment while I was doing all this work to try to fix whatever was broken inside of me that would make me make this decision."
Cynthia says at that moment, she had a glimpse of what her life could be like--that maybe one day she could help lift her husband and they could lift each other as they made their way back home to Heavenly Father.
And as she thought about that, she listened to a message from Elder Dale G. Renlund, "Latter-day Saints Keep on Trying." As an English teacher, Cynthia was especially intrigued when Elder Renlund began quoting Shakespeare's play As You Like It.
She felt connected to a particular character who gradually overcomes his desire to harm his brother, leading to the famous line, "Twas I; but 'tis not I" when another character questions his change of heart.
"Through repentance, through this process, we are given this gift to change, to be allowed to change and to be able to become the person that we weren't before," Cynthia says. "And that gave me so much hope that I couldn't even contain myself."
That hope grew when, the Sunday after watching general conference, Cynthia's husband pointed out a quote on the program from Elder Jeffery R. Holland's talk "Laborers in the Vineyard."
"However late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don’t have, or however far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines."
All this time, Cynthia says she felt like she dug herself into a dirty, murky pit and that it was difficult to see the light. And so when she read that quote, something inside of her changed.
"At the moment I read that quote, I could feel this light coming into this pit and circling me, even going underneath to lift me up, because I knew at that moment that Christ had sunk lower than how I felt," Cynthia says. "He had atoned for my sins. And He was not only there, but He loved me. And that was the first time that I really felt and knew that I was loved by my Heavenly Father and by Jesus. And I knew that He had sunk lower so He could be there to help me and to help me to return to Him."
Cynthia says it's been four years since she found those three general conference messages. And as she's worked through the repentance process, strengthened by those messages, she says she has seen Heavenly Father blessing her every step of the way.
"It was a long road. It was a long, hard road," Cynthia says about the experience. "But that was the time that I truly felt Christ's love for me and that I was worthy of His love no matter what I had done."
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