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Mary was an 18 year old Mormon. Lately, though, she had been falling away from the church. She had been busy with her classes, and had decided to skip going to church Sunday and just went to and extra class at Harvard.
Even though Mary's friends begged her to go to church, she rationalized that it would be okay, that church wasn't that important. Mary soon began to realize that, even though she concentrated on her studies, she did very badly.
One day, Mary had an especially hard time with her courses. She just couldn't concentrate. All of her professors asked if there was anything they could do to help her with her work. She said no and they left it at that.
When Mary got home to the apartment she shared with Sara, her room mate, She saw two boxes lying on the kitchen table. One was beautifully wrapped in sparkling purple paper, the other one was just sitting there, bare and lonely looking. In between them, she saw a small note instructing her to open one of the boxes.
Mary thought, "This is so easy, I'll open the pretty one." So she did. Inside was layer upon layer of beautiful silver wrapping paper. At the bottom of the box, she found another note. This one said, "The glamorous choices aren't always the best ones."
Wondering what that could mean, Mary curiously opened the other box. Inside was a humongous chocolate covered cherry. On top of it was another note. "It's never too late for repentance."
The next Sunday, Mary sat in the back row of the chapel wearing her pale blue, ankle length dress. Mary has never missed a day since.
If Mary had taken a closer look at the two boxes, she would have noticed that the sparkly box had many holes in it and the plain one was much larger with a sweet smell coming off of it. Whenever Mary considers missing a church activity or taking a Sunday course, she takes out those two boxes and remembers what was inside.
