“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled,” said Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount. (Matthew 5:6.) A corollary we add from our research is that they who hunger and thirst after anything but righteousness, which is a closeness and similarity to God, never achieve a satiety of the soul nor any lasting fulness at all. In the scriptures, the word joy very often appears in the same sentence with the words full, filled, or fulness. In many of these instances, the “fulness of joy” is mentioned after an individual has experienced terrible isolation and then put forth a tremendous effort to reach out to God and to the people around him. Alma the Younger and the sons of Mosiah, after experiencing “the darkest abyss,” decided that they “could not bear that any human soul should perish” in a similar condition. (Mosiah 27:29; 28:3.) They therefore embarked on a very difficult mission to the Lamanites. When the five met again, after “suffering all manner of afflictions,” Ammon, one of Mosiah’s sons, discussed his feelings in connection with his experiences: “Behold, my joy is full, yea, my heart is brim with joy, and I will rejoice in my God. . . . Yea, I say unto you, there never were men that had so great a reason to rejoice as we, since the world began.” (Alma 26:11, 35.) The joy felt by Ammon and his friends sent them back into the mission field, where they performed some of the most impressive works and preached some of the greatest sermons ever recorded. They had reached out of the isolation of sin to serve others, and they seemed to gain more capacity to be filled with joy as they poured themselves out to God and his children in a seemingly endless flood of love.

One reason Alma and the sons of Mosiah were so able to experience great joy was precisely that they had “suffered much anguish of soul because of their iniquities, suffering much and fearing that they should be cast off forever.” (Mosiah 28:4.) The fact that “there is an opposition in all things” (2 Nephi 2:11) creates a special form of justice in that it ensures that those who have felt deep anguish also possess the capacity to feel great rejoicing. The horror of the abyss carves out more space for joy, as long as the response to the yearning is not to pull things into one’s self but to give things of the self away to others. No one ever encountered more isolation and darkness than Christ did at His atonement, and His response to that moment of the greatest possible need was to give the greatest possible gift. Like Ammon, who met again with his friend and brothers after a painful and difficult attempt to save souls, Christ spent the period immediately after His mortal mission meeting and talking with people who loved Him. The account of Christ’s visit to the righteous part of the Nephites after the great destruction that accompanied His crucifixion hints that Jesus was affected by His experiences much as Alma and the sons of Mosiah were affected by theirs. After Christ told the Nephites about Himself and His doctrine, “it came to pass that Jesus spake unto them, and bade them arise.

“And they arose from the earth, and he said unto them: Blessed are ye because of your faith. And now behold, my joy is full.

“And when he had said these words, he wept, and the multitude bare record of it, and he took their little children, one by one, and blessed them, and prayed unto the Father for them.

“And when he had done this he wept again.” (3 Nephi 17:19-22.)

The joy that emanated through and from the Lord, almost immediately after His having been so utterly forsaken during the time He had borne our sins, was “full” to the point that it overflowed in prayer, in expressions of tenderness and service to His people, and in tears. What a marvelously human reaction! The magnitude of this experience may be beyond our understanding, but the pattern is something familiar to everyone we interviewed who had finally felt belonging after being lost in isolation.

. . . .

In some ways, however, those who have been the victims of compulsive cycles are different from those who have not. Perhaps the distinction lies in their having been born or raised in such a way that they are susceptible to behavioral addictions, or perhaps it is simply that they, more than many others, realize the universal vulnerability of the human condition. Certainly, [the victims] we see around us differ from many others in having been the battlefields upon which all-out, unseen wars have been fought between good and evil, between heaven and hell, between the divine and demonic aspects of their own personalities. Because of this, there may be some other differences between these recovering addicts and the other Latter-day Saints who sit around them tomorrow in church. [These victims] may be more quick than the rest of the congregation to see the profundity in simple words or the shallowness of glib ones. They may be more alert to the struggles behind their neighbors’ smiles or the questions behind their confidence. They may be less likely than some to pass over the sacrament as a habitual ritual while they wait for an interesting speaker. To them, the words, “that they do always remember him,” “that they may always have his spirit to be with them,” will never be matter-of-fact or casual, for they remember, more clearly than most of their fellow Latter-day Saints, a time when they had all but forgotten Him and assumed that His spirit could never be with them again. They have a little more than the usual understanding of the pain He suffered for them at His atonement. As we interviewed such people, we heard echoes of that pain in their voices and saw it in their eyes. There are no words to describe it. But language is even more inadequate to convey the fulness of joy that followed when a victim of compulsive behavior turned back and learned to live according to a process of happiness. To all those who still struggle with addictive behaviors, who live through a continual descent with nothing but a hopeless hope that their longings will ever be known or satisfied, we join the recovering addicts we interviewed in pointing out the invitation of Jesus Christ:

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

“For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30.)

We fervently believe that the atonement of the Redeemer is the way, the only way, by which the vicious cycle of compulsive behavior can be broken. Through Christ, the lives of behavioral addicts can be salvaged and made better than they were before. We know that this is true: we have seen it happen. During the research and writing of this book, we have seen many hearts broken and many spirits bruised by addiction. The ravages of the compulsive cycle reach into the lives not only of its victims but of all those who care for them. But there is no reason to abandon hope. In providing those affected by addictions with broken hearts and contrite spirits, Satan has put his own plan at great risk, for these things are all our Heavenly Father asks of us in exchange for eternal life. If we offer our hearts, souls, and lives to Him in complete humility, the Lord will help us turn back from the forces which pull us downward. He will forgive us, help us, and teach us to climb upward with our own strength until we are able to return and live with Him in the place we came from, the place we yearn for, the place where finally, after all our wanderings, we can know that we are home.

Martha Nibley Beck and John C. Beck

Breaking the Cycle of Compulsive Behavior, Deseret Book Company (1990)