The Temple

I grew to love the temple over time. When I first attended the temple as an adult, I was scared and I didn’t understand much. I didn’t prepare myself well or take the time to learn about the ordinances in the temple the way I should have prior to going. I got my endowment just before serving my mission and I looked at it as a right of passage to go on a mission, rather than a commitment in and of itself. The best advice I got that first day was to go to the temple often and I did, as often as I could. I found my initial insecurities about the temple were overcome by positive experiences in the temple where I felt the spirit confirm to me about the goodness of the temple. After my mission, while I was at BYU I went to the temple weekly and began to feel more and more at peace there, until before long, it was hard for me to remember why I ever felt out of place there.

When I was in college, I had a friend, who was not Mormon. From the time I first met him, I felt that he would be a great Mormon and quickly introduced him to the missionaries. He took the missionary discussions and started attending church. He really grasped the principles of the gospel quickly and connected with the doctrines of the church, BUT, he just couldn’t make the commitment to be baptized. He was learning and growing as a person, but couldn’t get to the point where he was ready to be join the church through baptism. After a while I just let the gospel discussions drop, but, at Christmas time, I took him to see the temple lights at the Oakland temple and after we went to the visitors center. I had never seen him get emotional and after we toured the visitor’s center this big, strong, guy was in tears. He felt the spirit of the temple so strong. He turned to me and said he wanted to get baptized. This was the first time I had seen the power of the temple first hand on someone who had not grown up knowing the significance of it. It was really powerful to me to see how someone else felt there and to know that the feelings I was learning to feel in the temple were real and not something I was just conditioned to feel.

Years later, I was living in NYC and they asked me to be a tour guide at the temple open house. Over 50,000 people visited the temple in just a few weeks, many who were not LDS. Taking strangers and some friends through the building was amazing. The Manhattan temple is located in one of the busiest areas in the city. It is in a high-rise building across the street from Lincoln Center. There is a subway stop almost right outside the front door. There are shops, hot dog vendors, apartment buildings and the convergence of two streets right in front of the temple. It is loud, there are people, taxis, buses and cars everywhere. You hear traffic non-stop and sirens all the time for ambulances headed to a nearby hospital. Like all of NYC, it can be really dirty. BUT, when you take the elevator to the temple and enter the building it is completely soundless. It is clean. The contrast stops you in your tracks. You suddenly find yourself slowing down, breathing, feeling. You separate yourself wholly from the craziness of the city and enjoy a solitude and peace that really doesn’t exist elsewhere in the city. The people I toured through the temple were blown away by it and almost universally people told me that they felt different there and could see why we love our temples so much. Again, I knew that the peace, love and joy you feel at the temple are strong but it was eye opening to see how others feel it.

I later worked in that same temple, first, as the person who organizes the weekly cleaning of the temple and later as an ordinance worker with Dave when we were newlyweds. Cleaning the temple regularly was one of the most spiritual experiences of my life. Our cleaning shifts were on Saturday nights after the last session. The cleaning crew would change into our white temple clothes and slippers, we would then participate in a prayer and a devotional service with the temple presidency. Sometimes you would be assigned to clean the bathrooms, other times the hallways or ordinance rooms, but every once in awhile you would be assigned to clean the Celestial Room. There is something amazing about serving in the temple in such a physical capacity. Imagine being all alone dusting and vacuuming the celestial room. I’ve never felt such a refuge from the world or as close to my Heavenly Father in a particular room.

I once visited a temple in Fukuoka, Japan with my mom and brother who had served a mission there and found my brother being smothered with love from a small, crying, Japanese women who we randomly saw that day. She told my mom and I how my brother had helped her and her family back to the gospel years earlier as a missionary. She testified forcefully how coming to the temple had transformed her life.

I learned the name of my first daughter Claire while rubbing my swollen, pregnant belly in the temple endowment room.

I have sat in the Celestial room with my husband, his parents, and all ten of their children and spouses and have felt what heaven must feel like. And how big and right it feels to have eternal families who have progressed together.

Just last month, I watched beautiful little Emma Thatcher be sealed to her sweet mom and dad and brothers and become a forever family.

I’ve had prayers answered, I’ve had broken hearts healed, I’ve had issues with the church resolved, I’ve had undeniable connections with people I’ve never met and have served as proxy for in the temple.

And it only gets better, I have looked into my husband’s eyes and have been sealed to the person I love most in this world for time and all eternity at the alter of the Lord in the temple.  (Even though I was late to my own wedding and he and his family thought I might not show up, I was a miraculous day.)

These experiences, and personal experiences I have had in the temple over the years, have confirmed to me that the temple has power to transform hearts. That it is not just a place that we have been taught to love. There is a presence there that brings a special kind of happiness and desire for greater commitment and growth than doesn’t exist elsewhere. Knowing that and experiencing the temple makes you want to always have it in your life.

In order to have it always in our lives, first, we need to desire it. I think the best way to desire the temple in your life is by visiting the temple. You cannot even go to the grounds, much less sit and reflect in the Celestial room, without feeling the presence of the Lord. Going to the temple in whatever capacity we can will impact us. If you have a temple recommend, be there as much as you can. Make it a priority. Talk about the good experiences you have had there with your family and friends. If you do not have a temple recommend, visit any temple that you can in proximity to where you live or vacation. Just sit and ponder on the grounds of the temple. Read your scriptures and pray in the gardens. If you have been to the temple and not had a good experience, try it again. Go with people you love and trust and start building up a rapport with the temple.

Second, you also need to be prepared to attend the temple. Prepare by learning all you can about the temple. Pay particular attention in classes when the temple is mentioned. Take a specific temple preparation class. Study on your own the church talks, pamphlets and books that have been written about the temple and scour the scriptures for details about past and present temples and ordinances. Ask questions about the temple from people who love the temple. There are very few things that we cannot share outside of the temple about the temple ceremonies. Don’t be scared to ask questions from church leaders and temple workers.

Last, be worthy to attend the temple. I wish there was a better word for this, because worthiness always seems like such a judge-y word to me. I think of worthiness as more of a process or a trek. It’s a leaning in to the Lord and becoming more like him and desiring what he desires for us. It is looking at ourselves candidly and asking ourselves where we stand in conjunction with our Father’s laws and course correcting where we have strayed.

I love searching for little architectural details, or motifs, in different temples on the exterior and interior. Often on furniture or doors you will find the smallest craving or prints detailing something specific to that temples history or location in the world. Whether it be olive branches, peach blossoms, angels wings, constellations, or beehives, each temple seems to have them. One day while visiting the San Diego temple for the first time, I was visually searching the temple for its theme. On the exterior of the temple there are two massive towers surrounded by smaller spires shooting upward to heaven. This is a typical feature of many temples and helps us remember to look up to the Lord, to point our thoughts and lives toward him. In the two-story Celestial Room I noted a unique feature that I hadn’t seen before in other temples. There are these large columns that hang from the ceiling. They look almost like upside down steeples. I couldn’t really figure out what the purpose of these upturned steeples were but then recalled taking a tour of an underground cave in Barbados years before.

In the cave, there were these massive structures called stalactites hanging from the ceiling of the cave. That looked much like these upside down steeples in the Celestial Room. Then on the floor of the cave directly under the stalactites were limestone columns mirroring the stalactites rising from the ground. They are called stalagmites. Our cave guide explained that stalactites are created by the continuous dripping of mineral rich water, which little by little leaves mineral deposits hanging from the ceiling as the minerals harden. Looking almost like a permanent, hardened icicle hanging from the ceiling of the caves. And stalagmites, the upward facing mineral spires, are created as the mineral rich water droplets drip to the floor from the stalactite leaving behind sometimes massive pillar like formations. Eventually they will join from floor-to-ceiling and become one enormous pillar. They grow very slowly around an inch every 100 years.

As I sat in the temple thinking about this imagery, I felt like those architectural temple spires perfectly represented us and our Heavenly Father. Him, hanging down reaching for us and slowing dropping his dews from heaven on us. Continually bathing us in his love, his mercy, his compassion. Continually buoying us up, helping us try harder and believe in ourselves more. And there we are at the base, starting so small, but, growing steadily under his sure hand. Learning, committing more, serving others, growing taller and stronger. And then before we know it we are almost there. Getting closer and closer day by day. We know all we need is a few more drops and then we will be one. Our father then distills his love on us even more and we finally become one, a pillar that is strong, impervious to outside forces, built on a solid foundation that was created from thousands of little experiences that have expanded us both. One of our apostles, Elder Bednar even refers to the temple as the “intersection between heaven and earth”, like the pillar I mentioned that connects us both.

It dawned on me that day that I don’t know of a better symbol of the importance of the commitments we make in the temple on us personally and our relationship with our Heavenly Father. Brothers and sisters, I know that committing to the ordinances we make in the temple and helping others do the same help us to be better people and happier people. The temple ordinances help us grow here on earth and grow eternally. I am so grateful to know that and to have experienced it first hand.