Sunday, May 18, 2014.
Wow. I have experienced sacred. I have just experienced the most sacred experience of my not so young, not so old life. God has blessed me incredibly! This is the greatest blessing I have ever received. I'm astounded. Tonight was the culmination of an experience that has been "in the works" over the passed ten or so days. It's been pretty intense.
So... as summer began I was excited at all the possibilities before me. I had a lot of interests and projects I could pursue. I also moved home and back into a ward that I love with friends I am close to. I got thinking about some ideas for building unity and helping the ward increase in spirituality etc. I started to feel like this summer could turn out to be really significant. Like we could actually change lives. My friend Rachel Ewell was all over the idea. I got the impression that the vision or feeling I was receiving for our summer had something to do with temples. As I further developed the idea I began to focus on "How can temple worship help us in coming to Christ and being changed by him?" That was what I wanted to study as an individual, and as a group of friends. I wanted to go to the temple and be changed by the temple and take others with me and them to be changed as well. I wanted all of our understanding to be deepened, our eyes to be opened, and our minds/hearts to be enlightened as we studied and learned about the temple. I decided I was going to start a "temple club."
Then stuff happened. :) I'm smiling because it's awesome how this works out, but I couldn't see how it all fit until tonight. So... I joined this facebook group called Uncensored LDS/Mormon discussion. It's mostly a bunch of atheist and agnostic Ex-Mormons bashing the church and congratulating themselves. I found it to be a great space for me. There are lots of opportunities for clarification of things that are misunderstood or mis-represented. It's a place where I can learn more about what issues people have with Mormons and their beliefs and it helps me hone and strengthen my own beliefs.
So there was this guy... He posted a thread asking other atheist or agnostic ex-mormons to please not post so that he could have a reasonable discussion with LDS members. He was very reasonable and it was obvious he had no axe to grind. He basically said "I left the church, I'm very secure in that path, feel free to debate me." I said I wasn't looking for debate but I'd love to hear more about his journey and why he left. He talked about his days in the church and feeling a powerful testimony and how he ran into some... "strange" things from church history. No problem! He incorporated them into his beliefs and maintained a strong testimony. He taught lessons and would sometimes bring these things up and have great discussions and really bring the Spirit. He bore testimonies and people would come up and say how moved or touched they had been by it etc. He was as TBM as they come. However this hit a snag when he learned of problems with the LDS claims of the Book of Abraham. This gave him so much trouble he even tried learning Egyptian in his effort to sort things out. No dice. He concluded that the Book of Abraham was a forgery and the rest of his paradigm of the church and Joseph Smith crumbled away.
At this point I was getting nervous. I could see lots of similarities between me and this guy. And he was a very reasonable person. I knew that whatever had bothered him about the Book of Abraham had to be significant. Not time to turn back now! I asked him for more detail on the Book of Abraham thing and he obliged me. He laid out some great sources and his analysis of them and his conclusions. It seemed convincing but there was a lot of material to look at. This is when it hit me: the hardest question or decision I have ever had to face.
So this issue of the Book of Abraham loomed out ahead of my forward path blocking any attempt to move forward. There was no way it was going to just go away I needed to deal with it somehow. I had promised that guy that I would look through the evidence. And I intended to! But not just yet... I wasn't prepared. I had to think about what was going to happen when I did. This was no small matter. This was something "of deep import."
I crave the legitimacy of honest, unbiased searching for truth. Easy to say, hard to do. So I had a problem. I wanted the stuff I looked at to support the church. But I also wanted to look at it objectively. My mind was pulling me in two different competing directions. I wanted to hold to the church and the gospel; however, in order to truly look at the information in an open, unbiased way I had to be open to the possibility that I was in error. An investigation where the outcome is pre-determined is no investigation. So what was I supposed to do? No really! What was I supposed to do?
This problem consumed me! Could I really put everything I "knew" on the line? Did this little discussion I'd gotten into on facebook really even matter that much? Why was I taking this so seriously? Well isn't the church true? So what am I worried about? But that doesn't make sense! I can't make up my mind before looking! How is that objective?! Are you questioning the truthfulness of the church and the restored gospel? Something you have testified about many times? Yes I am!? Agh! What does this mean? What does my life even mean without the church?! Can it mean Anything?
As you can see I was distraught. I wrestled and wrestled with this problem. "At length I came to the conclusion that" only one path remained to me. The Mormonism I held so dear to my heart demanded it of me. My favorite lesson of any church lesson ever is chapter 22 of Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith. "Gaining Knowledge of Eternal Truth." In the opening of the section titled "Teachings of (the prophet) Joseph Smith is the most powerful and incredible quote about how Mormonism is Truth. Read it. I felt bound to continue forward earnestly searching for the truth. If not, I could never again call myself a true Mormon. And to continue forward earnestly seeking truth meant accepting whatever the truth asked of me, no matter how difficult and painful.
At this point, I began to cry like a baby. I considered all the wonderful things I loved about the church and how it would be to lose them. I thought of how hurt my parents would be. I thought of how living in Utah Valley would be as an "Ex-Mormon." I thought of all my believing friends and family and how my relationships with each of them would shift fundamentally. I thought of how no girl would ever want to date me, and eve if she did we could never get married in the temple. I thought of how I would never get to have an eternal family! I thought of how my great dream of going to the temple and being endowed would never happen. My ordination to the Melchezedic Priesthood would never happen. My relationship with my Heavenly Father would vanish out of existence! All the things that bring light, joy, hope, and peacin into my life would be gone! At this point I would be crying again. Oh cruel, cruel fate! How could I have to go through this? How could I be asked to do this? Could truth truly be worth such a grim, terrible price? I would GLADLY die instead! As in, I would much rather die than the church be made up! But my living or dying could do nothing to affect the truthfulness of the church. And I had to face up to it. What was I going to do?
You cannot understand how hard this was for me unless you have gone through it yourself. Basically it came down to this: what is the truth worth to you? Is it more important to have comfort or truth? Ironically, Mormonism, which I so dearly loved, was telling me to forsake it, in the name of Truth. Hold onto that. I'll come back to it...
So I did it. I made the hardest choice I have ever made in my life. I chose to accept truth over anything else.
Thus began a very sad yet introspective time in my life. At this point I was convinced that the most likely course I would take would leave me atheist or agnostic. I struggled you could say... [slightly sarcastic voice hinting at huge understatement] I didn't know what to think. How was I to figure out how to act and think? What if this life was it? Of what meaning is my life? Do I pray? Do I study books? WHAT DO I DO?!!! You stick to who you are.
So ven though I had no more external moral system imposed on my, I still had me and who I was. I had just payed an extremely high price to prove that truth was the one principle in my heart that ruled all the others supremely. Truth and acting in accordance with truth. Then what? What did I value? Knowledge? Yes. How about science? Physics? Math? Computers? Beautiful and desirable yes! But hollow and empty when compared to the exquisite, tender beauty of the love between two human beings.
At that moment I realized that no matter how frail, or seemingly unimportant, Nothing in this world mattered to me more than people. And of all people the dearest and nearest to my heart was those precious, precious souls I called family.
I was filled with an overwhelming desire to cherish my family, to treasure every moment with my family, or my dear friends. The thought that one day they would all be gone to me drove home a sense of urgency and sincerity the like of which I have never before known. "Every teardrop [was] a waterfall."
Well... what happens next? Hmm... the day after I plunged into this, I went with my Mom on a trip to Orderville to visit my sister and her family. I was in turmoil throughout the three-day trip. It went Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
During this time I explored. I tried scrying [note only working through positive energy]. I tried meditation. I sent some texts to friends saying stuff like "make sure to live every moment like it's your last." I sent a text on the drive down to my friend Saralyn Ogden expressing my disbelief in the Book of Abraham. She called me right back. I didn't answer of course; I was riding in a car with my Mom. But we set up an appointment to talk that night. Saralyn Ogden is a good friend of mine from College. She left the church. The Book of Abraham was the tipping point for her. I got to know her not too long after she had left the church. Anyway Saralyn was incredible and offered me great consolation. What a friend. She was so helpful! And she tried to get me to see that just because I was struggling with something, didn't mean I had to leave the church. She introduced me by email to her brother-in-law Mahonri Stewart. That guy is a genius. As I read his blog titled "False Constructions Upon a True Church" I began to feel the slightest easing of my distress.
I enjoyed my time in Orderville as much as possible under the circumstances. Over time a bit of hope began to creep back into my heart. My meditation and "prayer" such as it was left me with feelings of peace. While I still thought this was most likely self-induced emotional/chemical behavior it still felt good. I enjoyed hearing my nephews pray even if it brought a tear to my eye that I couldn't join in their oblivious, happy, trusting belief. But I recognized the beauty and goodness belief played in their lives even if I did not accept it in kind.
I decided the best plan was to play along in the time I tried to figure things out. So I said some prayers, some very emotional, sincere prayers over meals etc. When my mom and I came home, I was beginning to think over my experiences in my life in the church and realized that a purely materialistic view of the world could not adequately describe my experience. I knew that there was something out there! I had experienced miracles first-hand. I had too many puzzle pieces of life that could only be made to fit within a puzzle that took the unseen world into account. My hope continued to grow.
I re-instated my practice of scripture study. I went to church on sunday and loved it. By this time I was learing back toward the belief that the church is true. I just was waiting for my belief to be confirmed and strengthened.
The next day I spoke with Ron(ald) Bartholomew. I caught him leaving a classroom after having a class. I talked to him of my struggle. He surprised me in not batting an eye. He didn't seem the least bit worried he only congratulated me and offered to shed insight on the Book of Abraham. Apparently this summer he is teaching a class for seminary and institute teachers how to deal with questions about the Book of Abraham. I said thanks maybe so. But I think I'm fine. I told him I feel peace and I feel hope. And that's the important thing. Also I already recognized the amazing effect this experience was having on me. It was opening my eyes to new possibilities and forcing me to look life right in the eyes. I was confronting difficult, important things and my heart was being conditioned to be receptive. If we are clay in the hands of the potter, I was being softened. :)
So things have continued to now. I consider myself fully back into the church, back into the tent of Zion. I have been since about Wednesday. I still don't know what the heck to think about the Book of Abraham. But I'm working on it. I believe in the church. I believe slightly differently than before perhaps. But it is with more love and appreciation for it now. I believe I have a more realistic and more healthy view of how our leaders lead and the church operates. However I know that I am on the right path and I know if I continue I will gain further enlightenment.
Speaking of which... I was talking to Ben tonight. He's moving out again tomorrow. We had a great talk! I love him. I finally opened up to him about this whole experience. We had been talking about so many good things including relationships, judging and liking yourself. Also how to bring a spirit of love, learning, inspiration, and unity to classes, wards, quorums etc. (He is E.Q. President in his ward).
So yeah I opened up and shared my experience. I got really emotional describing how difficult it had been for me. And how I put it ALL on on the line for Truth and how sweet it is now having the thing I love back again. I shared how now I know exactly how much I'll lay on the line for Truth. I learned something valuable about myself I could have learned in no other way. I value Truth above everything else! :) No matter how painful or difficult.
AS usually is the case, in processing what had happened with Ben, I discovered something I hadn't before. I hit upon the exact perfect way to explain the way I felt when facing the prospect of letting go of the gospel and stepping into the dark: "He who seeketh to save his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." In order to gain the gospel, I had to give it up! When this verse came to mind it struck me very powerfully. I understood it in a way that I never had before. And I instantly felt I had hit upon something important, of profound importance. And I knew that this was the whole point of my experience.
I have taken a very significant step in my understanding of the gospel. God asked me if the church was more important to me than truth. It about killed me. But when push came to shove, I was willing to lose the church/gospel for the sake of the truth. And now I received back the church/gospel only now it's like I get the real deal! Before it was only an image. Now it has come alive!
An influential scripture during my phase of exploration was Ether 4:12. A phrase that really stuck out is "I am the light and the life and the truth of the world." Jesus Christ is the truth of the world. :)
I was asked to give up the one thing in life that would be the hardest for me to give: The church and the gospel. I was asked to give it up for truth. I said yes! And I got it back better than before. I believe this to be the most significant thing I have learned in my life: You will be asked to give that which is most precious to you for the "truth of the world"'s sake. And in giving it up, we gain the kingdom of God. We gain back what we gave up, only this time it's the real thing, the thing we always wanted!
And you know what? This whole thing was a lesson on temple worship. This was all God's answer to my prayer. :) He is so kind and good and gracious. He answered my prayers more than I could ever have dreamed, in a way I never would have guessed. I will treasure what I have learned close to my heart. I know it is sacred. It is sacred to me! It's good to see God's hand in my life in such a direct answer to prayer. All I can say is Thank You! Thank You Thanks You Thank You!
Wow. I have experienced sacred. I have just experienced the most sacred experience of my not so young, not so old life. God has blessed me incredibly! This is the greatest blessing I have ever received. I'm astounded. Tonight was the culmination of an experience that has been "in the works" over the passed ten or so days. It's been pretty intense.
So... as summer began I was excited at all the possibilities before me. I had a lot of interests and projects I could pursue. I also moved home and back into a ward that I love with friends I am close to. I got thinking about some ideas for building unity and helping the ward increase in spirituality etc. I started to feel like this summer could turn out to be really significant. Like we could actually change lives. My friend Rachel Ewell was all over the idea. I got the impression that the vision or feeling I was receiving for our summer had something to do with temples. As I further developed the idea I began to focus on "How can temple worship help us in coming to Christ and being changed by him?" That was what I wanted to study as an individual, and as a group of friends. I wanted to go to the temple and be changed by the temple and take others with me and them to be changed as well. I wanted all of our understanding to be deepened, our eyes to be opened, and our minds/hearts to be enlightened as we studied and learned about the temple. I decided I was going to start a "temple club."
Then stuff happened. :) I'm smiling because it's awesome how this works out, but I couldn't see how it all fit until tonight. So... I joined this facebook group called Uncensored LDS/Mormon discussion. It's mostly a bunch of atheist and agnostic Ex-Mormons bashing the church and congratulating themselves. I found it to be a great space for me. There are lots of opportunities for clarification of things that are misunderstood or mis-represented. It's a place where I can learn more about what issues people have with Mormons and their beliefs and it helps me hone and strengthen my own beliefs.
So there was this guy... He posted a thread asking other atheist or agnostic ex-mormons to please not post so that he could have a reasonable discussion with LDS members. He was very reasonable and it was obvious he had no axe to grind. He basically said "I left the church, I'm very secure in that path, feel free to debate me." I said I wasn't looking for debate but I'd love to hear more about his journey and why he left. He talked about his days in the church and feeling a powerful testimony and how he ran into some... "strange" things from church history. No problem! He incorporated them into his beliefs and maintained a strong testimony. He taught lessons and would sometimes bring these things up and have great discussions and really bring the Spirit. He bore testimonies and people would come up and say how moved or touched they had been by it etc. He was as TBM as they come. However this hit a snag when he learned of problems with the LDS claims of the Book of Abraham. This gave him so much trouble he even tried learning Egyptian in his effort to sort things out. No dice. He concluded that the Book of Abraham was a forgery and the rest of his paradigm of the church and Joseph Smith crumbled away.
At this point I was getting nervous. I could see lots of similarities between me and this guy. And he was a very reasonable person. I knew that whatever had bothered him about the Book of Abraham had to be significant. Not time to turn back now! I asked him for more detail on the Book of Abraham thing and he obliged me. He laid out some great sources and his analysis of them and his conclusions. It seemed convincing but there was a lot of material to look at. This is when it hit me: the hardest question or decision I have ever had to face.
So this issue of the Book of Abraham loomed out ahead of my forward path blocking any attempt to move forward. There was no way it was going to just go away I needed to deal with it somehow. I had promised that guy that I would look through the evidence. And I intended to! But not just yet... I wasn't prepared. I had to think about what was going to happen when I did. This was no small matter. This was something "of deep import."
I crave the legitimacy of honest, unbiased searching for truth. Easy to say, hard to do. So I had a problem. I wanted the stuff I looked at to support the church. But I also wanted to look at it objectively. My mind was pulling me in two different competing directions. I wanted to hold to the church and the gospel; however, in order to truly look at the information in an open, unbiased way I had to be open to the possibility that I was in error. An investigation where the outcome is pre-determined is no investigation. So what was I supposed to do? No really! What was I supposed to do?
This problem consumed me! Could I really put everything I "knew" on the line? Did this little discussion I'd gotten into on facebook really even matter that much? Why was I taking this so seriously? Well isn't the church true? So what am I worried about? But that doesn't make sense! I can't make up my mind before looking! How is that objective?! Are you questioning the truthfulness of the church and the restored gospel? Something you have testified about many times? Yes I am!? Agh! What does this mean? What does my life even mean without the church?! Can it mean Anything?
As you can see I was distraught. I wrestled and wrestled with this problem. "At length I came to the conclusion that" only one path remained to me. The Mormonism I held so dear to my heart demanded it of me. My favorite lesson of any church lesson ever is chapter 22 of Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith. "Gaining Knowledge of Eternal Truth." In the opening of the section titled "Teachings of (the prophet) Joseph Smith is the most powerful and incredible quote about how Mormonism is Truth. Read it. I felt bound to continue forward earnestly searching for the truth. If not, I could never again call myself a true Mormon. And to continue forward earnestly seeking truth meant accepting whatever the truth asked of me, no matter how difficult and painful.
At this point, I began to cry like a baby. I considered all the wonderful things I loved about the church and how it would be to lose them. I thought of how hurt my parents would be. I thought of how living in Utah Valley would be as an "Ex-Mormon." I thought of all my believing friends and family and how my relationships with each of them would shift fundamentally. I thought of how no girl would ever want to date me, and eve if she did we could never get married in the temple. I thought of how I would never get to have an eternal family! I thought of how my great dream of going to the temple and being endowed would never happen. My ordination to the Melchezedic Priesthood would never happen. My relationship with my Heavenly Father would vanish out of existence! All the things that bring light, joy, hope, and peacin into my life would be gone! At this point I would be crying again. Oh cruel, cruel fate! How could I have to go through this? How could I be asked to do this? Could truth truly be worth such a grim, terrible price? I would GLADLY die instead! As in, I would much rather die than the church be made up! But my living or dying could do nothing to affect the truthfulness of the church. And I had to face up to it. What was I going to do?
You cannot understand how hard this was for me unless you have gone through it yourself. Basically it came down to this: what is the truth worth to you? Is it more important to have comfort or truth? Ironically, Mormonism, which I so dearly loved, was telling me to forsake it, in the name of Truth. Hold onto that. I'll come back to it...
So I did it. I made the hardest choice I have ever made in my life. I chose to accept truth over anything else.
Thus began a very sad yet introspective time in my life. At this point I was convinced that the most likely course I would take would leave me atheist or agnostic. I struggled you could say... [slightly sarcastic voice hinting at huge understatement] I didn't know what to think. How was I to figure out how to act and think? What if this life was it? Of what meaning is my life? Do I pray? Do I study books? WHAT DO I DO?!!! You stick to who you are.
So ven though I had no more external moral system imposed on my, I still had me and who I was. I had just payed an extremely high price to prove that truth was the one principle in my heart that ruled all the others supremely. Truth and acting in accordance with truth. Then what? What did I value? Knowledge? Yes. How about science? Physics? Math? Computers? Beautiful and desirable yes! But hollow and empty when compared to the exquisite, tender beauty of the love between two human beings.
At that moment I realized that no matter how frail, or seemingly unimportant, Nothing in this world mattered to me more than people. And of all people the dearest and nearest to my heart was those precious, precious souls I called family.
I was filled with an overwhelming desire to cherish my family, to treasure every moment with my family, or my dear friends. The thought that one day they would all be gone to me drove home a sense of urgency and sincerity the like of which I have never before known. "Every teardrop [was] a waterfall."
Well... what happens next? Hmm... the day after I plunged into this, I went with my Mom on a trip to Orderville to visit my sister and her family. I was in turmoil throughout the three-day trip. It went Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
During this time I explored. I tried scrying [note only working through positive energy]. I tried meditation. I sent some texts to friends saying stuff like "make sure to live every moment like it's your last." I sent a text on the drive down to my friend Saralyn Ogden expressing my disbelief in the Book of Abraham. She called me right back. I didn't answer of course; I was riding in a car with my Mom. But we set up an appointment to talk that night. Saralyn Ogden is a good friend of mine from College. She left the church. The Book of Abraham was the tipping point for her. I got to know her not too long after she had left the church. Anyway Saralyn was incredible and offered me great consolation. What a friend. She was so helpful! And she tried to get me to see that just because I was struggling with something, didn't mean I had to leave the church. She introduced me by email to her brother-in-law Mahonri Stewart. That guy is a genius. As I read his blog titled "False Constructions Upon a True Church" I began to feel the slightest easing of my distress.
I enjoyed my time in Orderville as much as possible under the circumstances. Over time a bit of hope began to creep back into my heart. My meditation and "prayer" such as it was left me with feelings of peace. While I still thought this was most likely self-induced emotional/chemical behavior it still felt good. I enjoyed hearing my nephews pray even if it brought a tear to my eye that I couldn't join in their oblivious, happy, trusting belief. But I recognized the beauty and goodness belief played in their lives even if I did not accept it in kind.
I decided the best plan was to play along in the time I tried to figure things out. So I said some prayers, some very emotional, sincere prayers over meals etc. When my mom and I came home, I was beginning to think over my experiences in my life in the church and realized that a purely materialistic view of the world could not adequately describe my experience. I knew that there was something out there! I had experienced miracles first-hand. I had too many puzzle pieces of life that could only be made to fit within a puzzle that took the unseen world into account. My hope continued to grow.
I re-instated my practice of scripture study. I went to church on sunday and loved it. By this time I was learing back toward the belief that the church is true. I just was waiting for my belief to be confirmed and strengthened.
The next day I spoke with Ron(ald) Bartholomew. I caught him leaving a classroom after having a class. I talked to him of my struggle. He surprised me in not batting an eye. He didn't seem the least bit worried he only congratulated me and offered to shed insight on the Book of Abraham. Apparently this summer he is teaching a class for seminary and institute teachers how to deal with questions about the Book of Abraham. I said thanks maybe so. But I think I'm fine. I told him I feel peace and I feel hope. And that's the important thing. Also I already recognized the amazing effect this experience was having on me. It was opening my eyes to new possibilities and forcing me to look life right in the eyes. I was confronting difficult, important things and my heart was being conditioned to be receptive. If we are clay in the hands of the potter, I was being softened. :)
So things have continued to now. I consider myself fully back into the church, back into the tent of Zion. I have been since about Wednesday. I still don't know what the heck to think about the Book of Abraham. But I'm working on it. I believe in the church. I believe slightly differently than before perhaps. But it is with more love and appreciation for it now. I believe I have a more realistic and more healthy view of how our leaders lead and the church operates. However I know that I am on the right path and I know if I continue I will gain further enlightenment.
Speaking of which... I was talking to Ben tonight. He's moving out again tomorrow. We had a great talk! I love him. I finally opened up to him about this whole experience. We had been talking about so many good things including relationships, judging and liking yourself. Also how to bring a spirit of love, learning, inspiration, and unity to classes, wards, quorums etc. (He is E.Q. President in his ward).
So yeah I opened up and shared my experience. I got really emotional describing how difficult it had been for me. And how I put it ALL on on the line for Truth and how sweet it is now having the thing I love back again. I shared how now I know exactly how much I'll lay on the line for Truth. I learned something valuable about myself I could have learned in no other way. I value Truth above everything else! :) No matter how painful or difficult.
AS usually is the case, in processing what had happened with Ben, I discovered something I hadn't before. I hit upon the exact perfect way to explain the way I felt when facing the prospect of letting go of the gospel and stepping into the dark: "He who seeketh to save his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." In order to gain the gospel, I had to give it up! When this verse came to mind it struck me very powerfully. I understood it in a way that I never had before. And I instantly felt I had hit upon something important, of profound importance. And I knew that this was the whole point of my experience.
I have taken a very significant step in my understanding of the gospel. God asked me if the church was more important to me than truth. It about killed me. But when push came to shove, I was willing to lose the church/gospel for the sake of the truth. And now I received back the church/gospel only now it's like I get the real deal! Before it was only an image. Now it has come alive!
An influential scripture during my phase of exploration was Ether 4:12. A phrase that really stuck out is "I am the light and the life and the truth of the world." Jesus Christ is the truth of the world. :)
I was asked to give up the one thing in life that would be the hardest for me to give: The church and the gospel. I was asked to give it up for truth. I said yes! And I got it back better than before. I believe this to be the most significant thing I have learned in my life: You will be asked to give that which is most precious to you for the "truth of the world"'s sake. And in giving it up, we gain the kingdom of God. We gain back what we gave up, only this time it's the real thing, the thing we always wanted!
And you know what? This whole thing was a lesson on temple worship. This was all God's answer to my prayer. :) He is so kind and good and gracious. He answered my prayers more than I could ever have dreamed, in a way I never would have guessed. I will treasure what I have learned close to my heart. I know it is sacred. It is sacred to me! It's good to see God's hand in my life in such a direct answer to prayer. All I can say is Thank You! Thank You Thanks You Thank You!
* * * * * *
So that was a transcript of what I wrote in my journal. By the end it was like 6:30 in the morning so I was getting tired. I'd like to expound upon what I wrote:
Last night (Sunday night) as I was talking to my brother Ben, the Spirit opened our understanding. He was able to understand me and the incredibly difficult choice it had been for me to honor truth and forsake everything I loved in life. It was a singular experience. As we reflected over the curious (and incredible) nature of the experience, he said something that made me think of that scripture in Matthew 10:39 (include JST). As I said already, I was instantly struck with the profoundness of the idea expressed in this scripture and how perfectly it applied to my experience. I am the type that gathers principles as I discover them. There are several principles of the gospel that I consider fundamental to my thinking. However I sense that this new principle is... in a league above. I almost feel that for the first time in my life, I have learned something significant. I have been tested in a small way, and passed the test. I have a feeling that this is not the last I will hear of this principle. In fact I sense that throughout my life I will have to experience it again several times if not often, each time the outcome profound.
As I was soaking this idea into my mind and heart and after saying good night to Ben, I continued pondering. I was overcome with gratitude and prayed a prayer of gratitude and joy.
Afterward as I was still basking in the light of revelation, still wondering at what I had learned, the Spirit directed me back to the beginning of the summer and the direction I had been pursuing–namely temples and temple worship. In a thrilling flash of illumination everything fell into place! The Spirit seemed to be saying: "Well now you have your answer :)"
At this point I collapsed to prone position on the floor as the most powerful feeling of gratitude, humility, and awesome wonder inundated me. God had answered my prayers and humble seeking directly. And in a way I could never in my wildest dreams have imagined. The answer to my question "How can temple worship help us as we seek to come unto Christ and be changed by him" lies in the scripture "He that seeketh to save his life shall lose it, but he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." This is the heart of temple worship. This is the core of covenant making. This is the recipe for salvation, as well today as in times of old. :)
