Happy Anniversary to Me

        The Salt Lake Temple is about to close for 4 years. I didn’t think I felt as deeply about the loss of this temple for a time until the last few times I’ve gone this year.

There is a spot right inside the actual temple - a grand hallway outside the first ordinance room that I will never forget. It’s maybe what the foyer into the personal Holy of Holies in my heart looks like. There are gorgeous newel posts and a bannister on the stairway at the far end, and a stunning stained glass window on the landing. There are exquisite chandeliers and paintings, beautiful woodwork and ornate trim. 

I remember the first time I stood there - on December 8, 1979 - the day I received my endowment.  My naive, inexperienced 23-year-old heart wanted to burst that I was finally entering the House of the Lord, and that particular spot has taken my breath away every time since that day. I’ve realized as I’ve attended this year that it’s taken this 40 years of wilderness to feel like I even begin to understand better what it really means to be prepared to “enter in.”  

Every time I have ever gone to the Salt Lake Temple, that vantage point still makes my heart leap - I am entering the House of the Lord!  I can’t do it justice to try to explain it, but you know I’ll try. There’s absolute joy and anticipation in it - and gratitude - but there’s another thing.  

As a kid and beyond, I’ve had dreams of being in various temples that I didn’t recognize at all.  Because my dream temples have been similar to the temples I’ve actually attended, and because the dreams have recurred over many, many years, I’ve wondered if I’m remembering something from before this life. Every time I have one of these dreams, I get excited (in my dream), and start to pay close attention, hoping to remember details. 

What I felt in the dreams with the temples-that-aren’t-temples-of-this-earth was remembering.  I truly believe that part of what took my breath away on December 8, 1979 was recognition and remembering.  

Part of the 40 years of wilderness experience since that day has included: 

 - Fear and nervousness of the unexpected in the temple

 - Fear and nervousness of forgetting 

 - Reluctance to take the time to go to the Temple regularly

 - Chagrin at recognizing how easy it’s been for the destroyer to talk me out of going to the temple

 - Understanding that in order to make a deeper habit of attending the temple, perhaps I didn’t even dare write my plans on my calendar for his evil minions to see

 - Growing appreciation for the simple beauty of the way God’s plan for His children is taught in the temple 

 - Deeper gratitude for being taught directly by my Creator, Father, and God, through the power of the Holy Ghost, in His holy temple. 

Several years ago, after a particularly rough patch of wilderness, things started to open up for me, and I couldn’t stop thanking Father for how He had wrought a mighty change in me. One night, as I was thanking him - again - for this great miracle, I felt, rather than heard these words: “I gave you as much as I could, for as seldom as you’re in the temple.” Please hear this: there wasn’t a hint of rebuke in this simple, loving statement of fact.  It was at that point I started making a more sincere and diligent effort to be in the temple more often.  This has taught me that even in this, there is a natural law, with natural consequences attached. No wonder apostles and prophets have referred to the temple as the Lord’s “university.”

More glorious than any other happy consequence of being in the temple more often is how I’m able to feel more and more the craving to be there.  As more storms have come in the wilderness, it’s become ever more instinctive to run home - to weep and mourn for my trials and earth stains, to feel comfort from heavenly Parents, to be strengthened to go back out into the wilderness, with power to go in the name of the Savior and do His work. 

The sure provisions of my God attend me all my days;

Oh, may Thy house be my abode and all my work be praise;

There would I find a settled rest, while others go and come;

No more a stranger nor a guest, but like a child at home. 

(Isaac Watts, My Shepherd Will Supply My Need)

In that one particular spot in the Salt Lake Temple, I will forever hear these words. Whenever I hear that beautiful hymn, in my mind, I’m in that sacred, exquisite spot just inside the Salt Lake Temple - my temple - the temple where Dale’s and my kingdom began - where the eternal organism of our family was born, one week later. 

Going to the temple is to give us the taste - the reminder - of home, and to give us the desire to be forever at home - in our original home.  The two most important invitations: come - and remember.