Saturday Soliloquy #6

Temple Square

because Ria asked (October 7, 2012)

I know the Temple at Temple Square in SLC, UT is beautiful.  I’ve been there.  I’ve even got a picture or two of me in front of it.  However, I don’t really remember anything at all about the Temple or the surrounding grounds.  I went there pretty often.  I remember at least three distinct visits.  I think, honestly, it was probably more.

The only thing I really remember of Temple Square are the sweet Sister Missionaries who were such a blessing and comfort to me.  As I reflect upon those visits to Temple Square now, I think I was seeking Christ in my own limited and rebellious way.  Although I did not find Him in the way He must have desired, I found His Love in those sweet Sister Missionaries.

Their names are gone from my mind.  Their faces are erased.  Beauty is the only thing about their physical appearance that I can remember.  Each one was radiant.  I wanted to BE them.  I wanted to BE a missionary (even though I decried any belief in the LDS Church at the time).  I wanted to feel love for everyone the way they so obviously did.

I knew they felt this amazing love for everyone, you see, because it was so very obvious that they loved me.  Steeped in sin as I was at that time in my life, they loved me.  They listened.  They accepted me.  The comforted me.  And it was just perfectly clear and obvious to me that they loved me.  And I wanted to BE that.

So, even though it took me around 8 years after those sweet visits to Temple Square in SLC, UT to return to church attendance… even though it took me that long to return to Christ overtly… I had found Him in those sweet Sister Missionaries on Temple Square.

Whenever I meet a woman in the Church who inspires me or who I aspire to be like, I feel compelled to ask them if they served a mission.  Whenever I meet a woman who seems to radiate Charity, I question without even considering: “Were you a missionary?”  And ya know what?  I cannot think of an exception, there may have been one, but I cannot remember it.  As I recall, every woman I can remember admiring or desiring to emulate has, indeed, served as a missionary.

Though we cannot change our past and I am mostly happy with who I am (my past is part of that so I have to accept it), there is a small part of me that wishes I would’ve been courageous enough to stick to the restored Gospel of Christ and served a mission.  There is a humungous part of me that wonders what and how I would be (and my life with it) different if I had been the woman our Father surely desired me to be: Faithful.

A potentially positive result of these almost wishes and musings, I desire very much for my girls, my daughters, to become like those sweet Sister Missionaries who worked at Temple Square.  Heck… maybe one or more of them will be such a missionary!  Wouldn’t that be something!?  It sure would do my heart some wonderful good.  But to be missionaries...  THAT is the most important aspect of one of my greatest goals for my daughters; all of my children.

Will I think them a failure if they do not serve a mission?  Certainly not.  If they grow up to know that their life is a mission that should be dedicated unto the Lord… then I will have accomplished something marvelous in them, for the world and, most importantly, for Heavenly Father!