If your focus wanders during the endowment, remember this

At the start of the year, I became an ordinance worker in the temple baptistry. There’s always a new face to greet or person to help, and the variety of ages and busyness keeps things interesting.

But because I’ve been in the baptistry so often lately, I felt out of sorts when I recently did an endowment session. Sitting for so long made me restless, and I found myself wondering what I was getting from this ordinance. It felt much more repetitive and predictable than the reverent bustle in the baptistry. My focus faltered. A lot.

So, you can imagine my interest when I found a recent Magnify podcast episode titled “Making the Temple a More Intentional and Healing Experience” with guest Dr. Wendy Ulrich. As I listened to the discussion, my mind and spirit expanded to the deeper meaning of the temple experience and its connection to our eternal progression.

If you are also searching for a new perspective to refresh your temple experience, here are four points that particularly stuck with me that may help you too:

When we perform proxy baptisms in the temple, we are laid beneath the water, as if dead, then brought up again, new and clean. The baptistry is also located beneath the ground, symbolic of a grave or buried body. This symbolism is probably familiar to most of us.

But listening to Dr. Ulrich inspired me to look for more symbols of death and rebirth in the other temple ordinances as I ascend to the celestial room, representative of eternal life.

Dr. Ulrich reminds us that Adam and Eve’s story in the endowment represents our journey through mortality. She points out that we can relate to their “needs for reconciliation and for clarity and discernment and being able to recognize the voice of the adversary…. We can see that the fall they experience is a fall we experience on a pretty much daily basis.

“And that’s what the temple teaches us. It gives us the big picture….It helps us see, ‘You can fix this. You can come out of hiding. You reconnect with the Lord. You try again.’”

The next time I feel my thoughts wandering during an endowment session, I want to keep this in mind. The consistent and patient guidance that Heavenly Father offers Adam and Eve, He also offers to me, daily.

Although each of us go through the temple as an individual, the larger temple experience is about community.

Dr. Ulrich points out, “Someone lays their hands on your head. Someone dunks you in the water….There is a physical part of every ordinance.”

The dead also rely on the living as we perform proxy ordinances here on earth. Dr. Ulrich shares that she prays for these individuals to receive the ordinances she performs on their behalf, something I’ve never thought to do.

Now I want to be more aware of the ways that others are physically helping me perform each ordinance. We are constantly being guided and relying on others within the temple, and we all go to the celestial room together.

Dr. Ulrich likens the washing and anointing of the initiatory ordinance to the healing of spiritual wounds we endure in daily life. She goes on, “Beyond just healing is a sense of wholeness, of not being splintered in a thousand directions, and then, ultimately, a sense of holiness.”

I can try to be mindful of this word chain as I perform proxy baptisms, confirmations, initiatories, endowments, and sealings, and then arrive in the celestial room, the holiest place in the temple.

When I feel that I’ve reached the limits of my spiritual understanding of the temple, I’m grateful to be reminded that there is always more to learn. Small symbols or ideas can completely reframe my perception when temple worship begins to feel rote.

But even as we’re navigating through periods of confusion, I know that Heavenly Father is proud of us as we remain patient and open to all He has to teach us.

Sometimes that knowledge may come slowly, but He promises us: “I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more” (2 Nephi 28:30).

For more tips on deepening your temple experience, check out the articles below:

▶ A realization about the word ‘endowment’ to bring more peace to your temple worship
▶ How can the Book of Mormon help me understand what happens in the temple?
▶ The simple thing my mom did that showed me the power of temple garments
▶ Know someone who recently received their endowment? Articles and podcast episodes to send their way