Maybe I’m a little selfish in my temple service.

Because mostly, it seems that I go for me.

I do like to think about the woman I’m doing ordinance work for. I like to think about her—I wonder what she’s like, if she’s there with me, if we’ll someday meet and connect in a heart to heart way I can’t fathom mortally. I wonder if she’s been waiting. If she knows something I don’t know, and if she’ll whisper it to me in my reverence.

But initially, as I head out every week, I’m going for something more: for an enlarged perspective. For understanding about temple work. For comfort. And assurance. And for some glorious epiphany that sometimes comes later, on my drive home or while writing in my journal—or sometimes never. Sometimes I go wondering what I’ll get out of it. Sometimes I go with a specific question in my heart. Sometimes I just go because it’s time to go.

I never leave empty-handed (or empty-hearted). Always I leave a better person. Always there is a fullness inside of me that belies it’s holy brevity—and though I can’t describe it in adjectives or emotions it seems to give a darker outline to the orange leaves against the mountain, and the sky looks bluer and more lovely, and my children have never been more beautiful or brilliant, and all in all God is just good.

Always, there is peace. Always, just spying the Angel Moroni amplified by the waxing sun to full brilliance, I feel a promise of something. And hope. Always, I want to go…

Even if sometimes I don’t understand the full significance of all of it.

Why do you go to the temple? What does temple worship mean to you? How do you get to the temple regularly?  And if you haven’t been to the temple yet, why do you want to go?

I have people in my life who don’t want to go to the temple because of the garment thing. Or the full-tithe thing. Or the coffee. I can’t explain to them how it will make them happy to go because I almost can’t explain it. How do you explain the temple to others?

I want to tell them about the jolt from the Spirit there that is more electric than caffeine, or how the silky reminder of garments will bless them at every moment of the day, and change how they feel about the whimsy of daily pining. I want to urge them the blessings of getting to be sealed to their children forever. But maybe these things move only me and maybe they’re why I go to the temple.

My life is so rich, so full, so satisfying, so much more because of the temple. And so while it’s generally understood that we go to the temple to serve, I can’t help but think of how every minute, it blesses me.

How does the temple bless you? What do the temple blessings mean to you? Do you feel that you grasp the full significance of the ordinances? How does the temple make you feel?

Related posts:

1. Tears
2. Ask, Receive
3. Having it all