“Within 24 hours, I knew I had made a very bad mistake. I became afraid of him and decided not to stick around,” she said.

So Graham, who has lived in Virginia the past 27 years, went to her parents home in Montreat, N.C., where her father still resides. Her mother, Ruth, died at age 87 last year.

“I had to go tell my parents. I thought, ‘What are they going to say to me?’ As I rounded the last bend in my father’s driveway, he was waiting for me. He wrapped his arms around me and said, ‘Welcome home.’ He showed me enormous grace.

“As I was talking to him one day, really beating myself up and taking responsibility for everything and just pouring my heart out, he said, ‘Quit beating yourself up. We all live under grace and do the best we can.’ ”

In the midst of her relationship turmoil, Graham’s children were hurting too.

One of her daughters had a child at age 16 and another baby not long after. Her son was treated for drug abuse and another daughter suffered from bulimia.

It was during these trials when she decided to go back to college to finish her degree at Mary Baldwin College, a women’s school in Staunton, Va., where she majored in religion communications. She began to fill in for her sister Gigi when she couldn’t make it to speaking events and found she had a talent for it.

Each of the five children of Billy and Ruth Graham is an evangelist or involved in some Christian ministry. Anne Graham Lotz, Ruth’s older sister, holds revival meetings worldwide through her AnGel Ministries. Franklin Graham has succeeded his father as head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and heads up Samaritan’s Purse relief ministry. The youngest sibling, Ned, spent years in ministry to China.

Ruth Graham said both her parents were living examples of how to follow biblical teachings.

“Our dinner conversations were about people whose lives had been changed because of the Gospel,” Ruth Graham said. “Everybody wants to make a difference in life. We saw it was clear that Jesus made a difference.”