Nobody Gets to Decide

I have to be honest — this conversation caught me off guard in the best possible way. Amy Herbert and I have known each other since high school. We sang together, did theater together, even roomed together for a semester at Ricks College. And then life happened and twenty-five years passed. When we reconnected recently I had no idea the depth of what she had walked through — or how beautifully God had been orchestrating her path the entire time. This episode is raw, real, and deeply faith-filled. If you have ever felt like you were too far gone, too lost, or too broken for God to reach, this one is for you.

In this episode:

• How twenty-six years in an emotionally abusive marriage slowly eroded Amy's sense of who she was

• The moment she resigned her church membership — and what God did next

• The day she sat by a lake not wanting to live and what God sent her in her darkest moment

• Why she does not regret leaving — and what she found when she came back

• What Amy would say to any woman who feels like joy is far away from her right now

Amy Herbert grew up in Utah Valley surrounded by performing arts — singing, theater, all of it. That is where she and I first crossed paths, and that shared love of music and performance bonded us immediately. She spent twenty years in Washington State running a performing arts school, raised a beautiful and wonderfully diverse family, and has been back in Utah for about nine years now.

On the outside Amy's life looked full. But inside, she was carrying something heavy for a very long time. Twenty-six years of marriage in a relationship that became emotionally abusive. A slow erosion of the truth she had always known about herself. A faith she eventually walked away from entirely — resigning her membership for three years. And then a journey back to Christ that is one of the most tender and honest stories I have ever heard.

She told me at the start of our conversation that she has a hard time believing everything happens for a reason — but she has seen God orchestrating options and pathways in her life. And she is happier now than she has been in thirty years.

Long before the divorce, long before she resigned her membership, Amy was a young mother who loved going to the temple. She would go weekly, finding in those quiet hours a clarity about who she was and a tangible sense of her Heavenly Father's love and approval. The temple was the one place where the toxic voices of her marriage could not reach her.

One day sitting in the temple, she had a clear realization — the marriage she was in was not what she had hoped for and not what she had been striving toward. She had no control over that. The only thing she could control was how she responded.

And then words came into her mind: there will be another.

She was startled. She did not want another. She wanted her marriage to be better. And then a second impression followed immediately: it's going to get worse before it gets better.

She filed both of those away. She did not fully understand them yet. But God was already working — already laying the groundwork for what was coming.

Amy has loved ones who are part of the LGBTQ community. As her marriage deteriorated and her pain deepened, she found herself pulling away from her faith because she did not feel like the people she loved most belonged there. She felt forced to choose sides. Eventually she found the courage to divorce — and around the same time she formally resigned her church membership.

She described that season honestly: everything she had clung to felt like it was crumbling underneath her. The day her ex-husband moved out she tried to show up with kindness, to help him move, to be Christlike. And when she walked up to the front of that house she simply crumbled. She lost the ability to stand.

She got in the car. She knew she was not safe. She wanted to drive to the railroad tracks. Instead she drove toward a lake near a temple. She started walking toward the temple but it felt too far. So she sat down on a bench by the lake, crying and grieving, not knowing what to do.

And then she prayed — or something like a prayer. She said: if there is a God or whatever power is up there, speak to me in the language of my understanding.

Within a few minutes, three different people walked by with fluffy dogs. Three times she asked if she could pet them. Three times they said yes. And she buried her face in those sweet animals and wept — letting them absorb everything she was carrying.

She knew. She knew that was her answer. God had spoken to her in the exact language she would understand. And she decided right then that she wanted the anchor of Christ's story back in her life.

After the divorce Amy did something that surprised even herself. Rather than rushing back to what she had known, she started from zero. She essentially became agnostic — deciding to let go of everything and figure out what she actually believed. She was not going to hold onto something just because she had always been told it was true.

What she found in that process was something unexpected. The truth that she was a child of God and had infinite worth — that never left. She had it tattooed on her wrist during those years away, three symbols representing the same truth she had always known, just expressed in a different language. The doctrine of Christ — forgiveness, rebirth, the cycle of death and new life — she kept finding it everywhere she looked. In mythology. In literature. In the hero's journey. In science. It was the same story, told over and over in every culture, in every age.

She also wrestled with the hard questions. Church history. The Book of Mormon. The things that had made her shelf feel too heavy. And she came to a place where she said — nobody gets to tell me that because I have a question about these things, I cannot believe in Christ. That part is mine. Nobody gets to take it away from me.

When she walked back into a chapel and later stood before the Christus statue at the conference center in Salt Lake, her husband beside her, she was overwhelmed with love. The opposite of everything she had come to believe about herself in that abusive marriage. He leaned close and whispered: welcome home.

She asked to be rebaptized.

Not because the water is magic, but because she wanted to choose the transformation intentionally. She wanted a fresh start.

One of the things Amy said that I have not been able to stop thinking about is this: God speaks to us in the language of our understanding. For her that meant fluffy dogs on a bench by a lake at the lowest moment of her life. It might mean scripture for someone else. Or music. Or a phone call from a friend who somehow knew to reach out at exactly the right moment.

He is not limited to one channel. He is not waiting for us to be perfect before He reaches toward us. Elder Gilbert said it beautifully in his Come Home talk from April 2026 General Conference: because of our covenant with God, he will never tire in his efforts to help us and we will never exhaust his merciful patience with us.

Amy experienced that firsthand. Even during the three years she was not a member. Even during the years she did not acknowledge that what she was feeling was God. He was still reaching. He was still sending bids for connection. He never stopped.

About a year after her divorce, Amy was considering a new friendship that felt significant. She decided to fast — not because she was fully back in her faith yet, but because she remembered that fasting was a way of showing intention. She wanted to be sincere about the choice in front of her.

She was teaching eighth grade language arts that morning at nine thirty. Her students were being their wonderfully wild selves. And then — powerfully and unmistakably — words came into her heart and her mind: this is the other. This is always what I had in mind. This was my plan all along.

The words God had spoken to her in the temple years earlier finally had their answer. There will be another. He had always known. He had always been working. She just had to walk the path to get there.

She married that man. She is sealed to him in the temple. She calls him the best man she has ever known. And she has a beautiful family with children ranging from age five to twenty-seven.

I asked Amy what she would say to women who feel like joy is far away from them right now. Her answer was so simple and so profound that I have been sitting with it ever since.

Look at the little girl you were when you were eight years old. What brought her joy? Do something like that for yourself. And the floodgates will open and you will recognize the Lord's hand in your life.

For Amy that meant buying ballet shoes and taking a ballet class again. And standing there in that studio she remembered who she really was. That little girl had never actually gone anywhere.

One step toward her. Then the next. Just one little thing at a time.

I want to close where we started — with Elder Gilbert's Come Home talk: choices do have consequences, but we know in the gospel of Jesus Christ that when we lose our way spiritually, the Savior still allows us to change. Because of our covenant with God, he will never tire in his efforts to help us, and we will never exhaust his merciful patience with us. And should we stray, he will help us find our way back.

Amy's story is a living testimony of those words. She strayed. She questioned. She resigned. She sat on a bench by a lake and did not want to live. And God sent her fluffy dogs and whispered welcome home and kept every single promise He had ever made to her.

He will do the same for you. Nobody gets to decide whether you are too far gone — not other people, not your past, and not the adversary. That decision belongs to Christ alone. And He has already decided. You are worth coming home for.

If this episode spoke to you please share it with someone who needs it today. And if you would like to be a guest on Becoming the Oak Rooted in Christ reach out to me at kendra@becomingtheoak.com.

Until next time — be still, believe, become..