I should have written this a week or two ago, but I let life keep me busy and that's never really a good thing. In the last few weeks, several things have happened and I'll have to tell you about them a little at a time.
The one thing I most want to talk about is our trip to the temple last week. Well about 10 days ago now. You see my daughters and I had been going to visit the Portland Oregon LDS temple every week since they began this school year in September. After I received my endowments on December 31st, we visited once and stopped for about eight weeks. Things were BUSY! Phew!
Finally, we made it a point to go visit. We were there on a Thursday and we were hoping our favorite temple worker was there. Lo and behold! He comes walking into the lobby still dressed in his temple clothes! He looks like an angel. Brother Rosenbaum, or Rosenbalm, (I'm not quite sure which!) enters the atrium after we've said our prayer and are about to read from Book of Mormon Stories. He visits with us for about 30 minutes so we can catch up on things. We tell him we haven't come for a while due to illness and being so darn busy! I inform him I received my endowments in December and I completed some temple work for my great^3 grandmother, Katherine Schmidt from Russia. Such exciting news!
Brother Rosenbaum has adopted us as his family too! Yay! He writes down all our names, our address and the like so we can stay in touch. Such a sweet man! He truly is an angel and he always makes our visits to the temple so much sweeter.
So with all that said, I need to bear my testimony of the temple. Here goes nothing:
Last year, sometime in September or October, my girls and I were on our weekly visit. We had prayed, read scripture and visited in the atrium of the temple. We stayed for about 45 minutes or so. As we were walking out, there was a sister temple worker in the lobby near the exit doors. The girls had already walked out the door and I was following, but the sister looked at me, smiled and said, "I am so proud of you." I just smiled and said something humble, like "Thank you" or "I'm not doing much." I didn't really brush it off, but it didn't hit me until I reached the car what had happened.
Heavenly Father had used this sister to tell me He was proud of ME! Holy good heavens! He spoke to me. Little old me! I hadn't been asking, or maybe I had been asking for so long I'd forgotten I was asking, but a fervent prayer and wish in my heart had been answered. He was PROUD of me!
You see this hits home because I made a LOT of mistakes when I was a teenager and in my early 20s. I was looking for my dad to be proud of me. He had checked out after my uncle committed suicide. It was really rough on him, but I NEEDED him and he wasn't there. Physically, yes, but emotionally, he just wasn't there. I had boyfriend after boyfriend and husband after husband (There are THREE ex-husbands, people!) seeking some type of acceptance from a strong male figure because Daddy had gone.
Now let me tell you, I love my dad. I know my step-mom, Sandy, is going to read this and maybe my dad will too, but this is me and this is how I feel. I'm not trying to condemn, blame, judge, persecute, or anything else, but this is how I feel and how I felt for a really long time. I had to come to the realization that I can't change the past and part of my past is a broken me and a broken family. Mom and Dad, I love you! Know that! I MEAN IT!
Back to the task at hand. For a bunch of years, while I was in the U.S. Army, I wanted my dad to tell me he was proud of me, of what I was doing, and where I was going with my life. I felt I had to beg him and he always told me he was proud of me when I asked, but I needed him to tell me he was proud of me without me having to ask. It's true. I went through my 20s with craziness and multiple marriages and a couple babies. I entered my 30s pregnant with my third child and in the process of my third divorce. That's when it hit me that I needed to get past all this needing my dad to be proud of me. I, ME, needed to be proud of me. That's all. But that day in the temple, my Father was proud of me. He told me I was doing the right thing. He told me, through a sweet temple worker, that I was on the right track. He told me the ONE thing I had been praying to hear without ever really voicing it.
All in all, I wouldn't change a thing that has happened in my past. It has made me the person I am today. I have an amazing husband, three beautiful children, two awesome step-sons, and I'm going to school. We're happy. Stressed out, with a tight budget, but we're happy. That type of happiness comes from knowing trials and pain and suffering. But I have the temple to go to for peace and calm and to get away from the madness of the world. God and Jesus Christ are there. They love me and are PROUD of me! What else is there, really?
Temple are sacred places. They are the house of God. He is there. He lives there. I know this to be TRUTH! In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
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