When Was the Last Time You Stood in Awe?

Before every temple shift, we gather together for a spiritual thought.

It is one of my favorite parts of serving in the temple. There is something about those few minutes before we all go to our assignments. We are dressed in white, the temple is quiet, and for just a little while we get to turn our thoughts toward Jesus before the work begins.

This week our temple matron stood to give the spiritual thought, and we opened by singing “I Stand All Amazed.”

I have sung that hymn so many times. Probably hundreds. But that morning one word stayed with me.

Amazed.

She started talking about people in the scriptures who encountered Jesus and what happened when they did.

They marveled.

They were astonished.

Some fell at His feet.

Some worshipped.

Some wept.

Some rejoiced.

Some couldn't wait to tell someone else.

The disciples on the road to Emmaus said their hearts burned within them as He walked with them.

Mary Magdalene went to the disciples and simply said, “I have seen the Lord.”

The woman at the well came for water and ended up leaving her waterpot behind. She ran into the city saying, “Come, see a man.”

After Jesus calmed the storm, the disciples marveled and asked, “What manner of man is this?”

And when Jesus appeared to the people in the Book of Mormon, they fell at His feet and worshipped Him.

I loved thinking about all of those reactions because they weren't exactly the same.

Some people cried.

Some fell down.

Some ran.

Some worshipped.

Some just stood there marveling.

But every one of them had encountered Jesus, and something inside of them responded.

As she was talking, I found myself asking a question I hadn't really thought about before.

When was the last time I was in awe?

Not thankful.

Not happy.

Not when I noticed something pretty and thought, that's beautiful.

When was the last time something stopped me?

When was the last time I stood all amazed?

Two moments immediately came to mind.

The first was the San Diego Temple.

If you have ever driven that freeway, you probably know the moment I'm talking about. You round the corner and suddenly there it is.

I knew it was coming. I knew where we were going.

But somehow seeing it still caught me off guard.

I remember just staring.

It was one of those moments when something is so beautiful that for a few seconds you don't really have words for it.

Awe.

That memory made perfect sense to me.

The second one surprised me.

And this one is harder to share.

Not long ago I had a difficult conversation with my oldest son.

My son is gay. He has stepped away from the Church, and there are parts of his experience with the Church that have hurt him deeply.

We are close, and I am so grateful for that. But being close also means we don't always avoid the hard conversations.

And during one of those conversations he asked me something that has stayed with me.

How can you love a church that has hurt me so much? That has hurt our family?

I wish I could tell you I knew exactly what to say.

I didn't.

I love my son.

And I love the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Both of those things are true.

And sometimes, if I'm being completely transparent, I don't know how to hold both of them without feeling like my heart is being pulled in two directions.

There are moments when I worry that my son will look at my faith and somehow hear, “I choose this over you.”

And that isn't what my heart is saying at all.

But I also know that I can't tell him how his experience should feel. I can't explain away pain just because I wish it weren't there.

So we talked.

And afterward I went to the temple for my shift.

But I carried that conversation right through the doors with me.

Isn't that how it usually works?

We don't leave our real lives in the parking lot when we walk into the temple.

We bring them in.

The marriage we are worried about.

The child we can't fix things for.

The prayer that still hasn't been answered.

The conversation we keep replaying.

The question we aren't quite brave enough to say out loud.

That day I brought my son with me. Not physically, but he was very much on my heart.

I kept thinking about what he had said.

His hurt.

My response.

What I wished I had said differently.

What I still didn't know how to answer.

And that day, one of my assignments was as a greeter at the front doors of the temple.

So there I stood in my white temple dress, welcoming people into the house of the Lord while having this entire conversation going on quietly inside of me.

At some point I looked toward the windows.

The sunlight was coming through the glass and had formed a beautiful rainbow.

And I need to tell you this part because it matters.

I was standing there thinking about my son, thinking about that conversation, thinking about how to love him well, and there was this rainbow coming through the windows of the temple.

Then one of the men serving at the recommend desk looked over at me.

“Sister Insera, your whole white dress has a rainbow on it.”

I looked down.

It did.

The colors were all over me.

And I just stood there.

Then came the gentlest thought.

It wasn't dramatic. There wasn't some huge spiritual declaration. In fact, it was so quiet that I almost hesitate to describe it.

It felt like a whisper to my heart.

Almost like an angel reminding me of something I had forgotten.

“I love him too.”

That's it.

I love him too.

Even writing those words makes me emotional.

Because I think somewhere in my worry about my son, I had started carrying something that was never mine to carry.

I wanted God to understand my son's heart.

I wanted Him to understand why this has been hard.

I wanted Him to know how good my son is.

How much I love him.

How much I want him to know that he is loved.

As if I needed to explain my own child to the God who created him.

And there in the temple, covered in the colors of a rainbow, came this little reminder.

I love him too.

Of course He does.

He loved my son before I ever did.

He knew him before I held him for the first time.

He knew the questions he would someday ask.

He knew the road he would walk.

He knew there would be things I wouldn't understand.

He knew there would be things my son wouldn't understand either.

And He loves him.

Not someday.

Not when everything gets figured out.

Not when all the questions are answered.

Now.

Maybe that rainbow wasn't an answer.

Actually, I don't think it was.

It didn't suddenly resolve the tension my son feels. It didn't erase his hurt. It didn't give me the perfect response for the next time we have that conversation.

But maybe I didn't need an answer that day.

Maybe I needed a reminder.

Your son is Mine too.

I love him too.

And suddenly I understood what our temple matron had been talking about.

Awe.

The first time I remembered standing in awe, I was looking at a temple.

The second time, I was standing inside one.

And both times Jesus found a way to stop me.

I keep thinking about all of those people in scripture who encountered Him.

The woman at the well left her waterpot.

Peter fell to his knees.

Mary ran to tell someone.

The disciples worshipped.

Others marveled.

Their hearts burned within them.

Something happened when they realized Jesus was near.

And maybe that is what awe really is.

Maybe it isn't always witnessing something magnificent.

Sometimes it is rounding a corner on the freeway and seeing a temple rising into the sky.

But sometimes it is standing at the front door of that temple with a broken heart.

Sometimes it happens right in the middle of a question that doesn't have an answer yet.

Sometimes it is realizing that while you have been begging Jesus to enter into a situation, He has been there the entire time.

I think I spend a lot of time asking God what I should do.

What should I say?

How do I fix this?

How do I love better?

How do I hold onto what I believe without making someone I love feel like I am not holding onto them?

Those are still questions I have.

But maybe there are moments when God isn't giving me instructions.

Maybe He is giving me Himself.

And perhaps my job is simpler than I keep making it.

Love my son.

Keep loving Jesus.

Listen more.

Defend less.

Keep learning.

Keep showing up.

And trust God with the parts of the story I cannot see yet.

I don't have to convince God to love my son.

I don't have to explain my son to Him.

I don't have to know how the whole story ends.

I just need to remember whose hands both of us are in.

“I Stand All Amazed” sounds a little different to me now.

Because maybe standing amazed isn't finally understanding everything about God.

Maybe it is realizing He understands everything about us.

And stays.

He knows my son's whole story.

He knows mine.

He knows where faith gets complicated.

He knows where relationships hurt.

He knows the questions we are afraid to ask.

He knows how much a mother can love her child and still sometimes wonder if she is getting any of this right.

And somehow He meets us there.

Sometimes with a miracle.

Sometimes with a scripture.

Sometimes with someone saying exactly what we needed to hear.

And sometimes with sunlight coming through a temple window, casting a rainbow across the white dress of a mother who needed one simple reminder.

I love him too.

So now I can't stop thinking about the question that came to me during that spiritual thought.

When was the last time I stood in awe?

And maybe that's a question worth sitting with.

When was the last time you did?

When was the last time you stopped long enough to notice Jesus in the middle of your actual life, not the cleaned up version of it?

Because maybe He doesn't always show up where we expect Him.

And maybe sometimes the miracle isn't that He showed up at all.

Maybe the miracle is that, for one sacred moment, we finally noticed He had been there all along.