The other night we were driving home from Provo. The drive for us is a good hour North on the I-15 highway. Now driving that stretch takes us past quite a few temples. Six to be exact. But most of them are difficult to spot because they are either tiny dots from away far off or they are ones that the highway only allows brief moments of clarity for a quick glimpse. I'm certain my children think the State Capitol Building is the Salt Lake Temple for this very reason.
But the Timpanogos Temple in American Fork is different. It is quite a ways off the freeway, but there are miles of open fields that allow a passerby minutes (not just moments) of gazing at its distant glow. So as soon as we came into the clearing where its brightly lit spire was visible, I tried to point it out to my children.
I soon realized that driving and pointing at something for your children to see is a combination that does not go hand-in-hand and is pretty much one of the must frustrating things on this wide earth. Because where your finger points from your stand point is not at all the direction it should be pointing from each of your three children's stand points. And my children in particular seem to be blind to anything beyond the shoulder of the highway.
Those minutes of beautiful temple brilliance passed in complete and total frustration, until finally my 4-year-old announced that he could see it (out of truth or consequence, I know not) and I gave up on the 3-year-old who try as she might could not seem to point her gaze in the right direction of my mis-guided finger. Then we continued on our drive, which soon became extremely quiet as my brood succumbed to, what always looks like, a terribly uncomfortable car-seat sleep.
Upon exiting the highway and turning toward home, our silence was suddenly interrupted.
"I see it now!"
The sweet voice of our 3-year-old pierced the darkness.
"What do you see?" I asked intrigued.
"The temple!!!!"
Somewhere between the intersection's brightly lit "Rancheritos" and "Enterprise Rent-a-car" signs, she could see a temple. Go figure. I can only imagine how hard she must have been searching in her dreams for that to be her waking words.
**** and here it seems appropriate to insert something about how my hope for her will be that she always search for the temple with such diligence. But that would not be my hope for her. No. Instead, my hope is that she will find the temple. That she will always know exactly which direction to look to see its holy glory. And that she will always stay on the path that will lead her inside its gates. I don't want her to simply search. I want her to find. And then never lose sight of it once she does. That is my hope for her.
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