I wasn't going to blog about this experience, but then I realized there were a few things that I wanted to share about it.
The day after Christmas I went to the Fresno Temple with members of my family and received my endowment. This is a sacred ordinance in the LDS Church and it is a tremendous blessing to God's children. (Read more about temple work here). I cannot share what exactly took place inside the temple for the endowment ceremony. However, I will try to express how I felt.
First of all, the timing feels so pertinent to the value of this experience. I know that this was the right time for me to complete this ordinance and it was incredible to me how things unfolded beforehand and it all fell into place. This ordinance most often takes place in preparation for marriage or a mission--for reasons that I won't get into here. However, there are times when single members like me also receive this ordinance. You prepare to receive it your entire life by keeping commandments and living the Gospel, but last year is when I started to prepare with an end goal in sight.
The timing looked kind of perfect for my family members to come out to DC in October and go through the temple with me here. To say I was excited was an understatement. It's not really something you announce so it took a lot of self control to contain my joy and not tell anyone and everyone about what I was going to do in the coming months. I was especially excited to go to the Washington, DC Temple. While I love the Fresno Temple and the special experience I had there when I was sealed to my family, I have truly come to love the Washington, DC Temple and was really looking forward to going through there.
When my lovely older sister started to seriously date a guy over the summer and there was talk of an upcoming wedding, it seemed the chances of my family flying across the U.S. to DC were lost. My sister became officially engaged in September and a date was set for January (which is now in just two weeks!). This not only meant that my family wouldn't be coming out to DC, but it also left a very narrow window for me to go to the temple with them since I would only be home for a few days over the Christmas holiday. And of course then I wanted to make sure to be endowed before the wedding so I could be present in the temple for the sealing.
Scheduling the temple session became very tricky, because of my family's travel arrangements and all that was going on around the holiday. Remember my sister's bridal shower? That was a big ordeal and one of two showers I attended/planned on the same day I went to the temple.
At one point, the anxiety from planning the shower and the nerves that had built up from the idea of doing this ordinance made me want to postpone the temple date to a less stressful time. Though if I postponed I would miss my sister's wedding probably by only a few weeks. But I was dying from the stress. I couldn't comprehend how it would be a peaceful and uplifting experience if it was squeezed to fit into an already impacted day. I expressed these concerns to my Dad over the phone. I was in a "woe is me, I'm a middle child and can't get what I need" state. Wow, just writing that makes me realize how ignorant I was. I told him I didn't want the stress to distract from the sacred experience. My Dad helped me realize something that I had forgotten about one reason why we have temples. Besides the ever important ordinance work, temples are a place where we can feel peace despite the chaos in the world around us. As the Lord's house, it will always be filled with His spirit. My dad told me that going to the temple that morning couldn't be a more perfect time, because of the peace it would bring me. I consented that he had the right and tried to focus on the blessings of that day. I also know that Satan tries very hard to keep us from doing important things. I'm sure he was doing all he could to discourage me.
So a few days later when I was unable to go to the LDS Distribution Center in DC to buy my temple clothes because of the big snow dump , it hardly phased me. I almost expected something like that to happen. But I was determined to get what I needed. By some miracle, my sister was driving down to Los Angeles that same morning and she was able to get temple clothes and garments for me.
So the morning finally arrived. My mom and I had arrived early and I entered the temple for the endowment session. Things went seamlessly. The Temple Matron, Sister Stoker, was a longtime friend of our family's and it was so special for her to be there with me. She is one reason why I'm so profoundly grateful that I went through in Fresno. She and her daughter were special role models to me when I was a young and impressionable girl. She and my mother were both a comfort and helped ease my nerves from not knowing exactly what to expect.
The endowment ceremony was a bit overwhelming, but as a whole it was quite remarkable in its simplicity. I was surprised at how natural it seemed. I felt the love of my Savior, Jesus Christ, more powerfully than any other time or place in my life. I also felt a defined sense of purpose and divine worth as a daughter of my Heavenly Father.
I was greeted by members of my family in the Celestial Room. I was reminded of the day my family was sealed almost 10 years ago in the Fresno Temple--all dressed in white in one of the sealing rooms there. The few of us who were there with me that day were all dressed in white again. The endowment ceremony is the same in every temple across the world, but I could not have completed it in a better time or place than that morning in Fresno with my family.
Last Saturday I was able to go through the Washington, DC Temple with a few friends before it closed for maintenance work. I didn't have to wait very long to fulfill my wish to visit the temple here and I look forward to going back there often while I'm in DC.
beck
