Sealed
Today I drove to Nauvoo to do sealings. I had 5 couples and 1 daughter, all that remained from the cascade Catherine Andersen began several years ago when she helped me find a handful of family names during Sunday school one day. I joined a session in progress and they folded me in to the work. I served as proxy for the wife during a number of sealings, some of my family names and some of others, and stayed there as the daughter was sealed to her parents. I felt tender especially during the couple sealings, thinking of what it means to keep my covenant to God to be a certain kind of wife and mother. The poignancy these days is all about my children and their relationships with me. I had tears streaming down my face during much of the ordinance and I felt God's love for me.
After a couple of turns at the altar, the sealer asked me if I would like to be a witness. He asked if I had done it before and then explained the specifics of the role, what to watch for. I was grateful that he had offered me the opportunity as it was something I looked forward to.
I sat to the right of the sealer as he performed several more sealings of daughters to parents. It was a point of view I had not experienced before. I could clearly see the hands of the proxies for the parents clasped over the altar with the child's proxy's hand on top. The direct physical sight of the child's hand touching both parents' hands got me thinking about what it means for a child to be sealed to her parents when the parents are no longer married. The thought occurred to me that when we marry, we each serve as a proxy to the other for Christ. The covenant we make is to God, not each other, to be a certain kind of spouse. Our willingness to continue in repentance and forgiveness to become increasingly more like Christ in our role is the thing that binds our children to us.
I don't know all the details of how things work out in the eternities, what they will look like, but I know that the celestial kingdom is not so much a place as a way of being. Zion is the pure in heart.
After a couple of turns at the altar, the sealer asked me if I would like to be a witness. He asked if I had done it before and then explained the specifics of the role, what to watch for. I was grateful that he had offered me the opportunity as it was something I looked forward to.
I sat to the right of the sealer as he performed several more sealings of daughters to parents. It was a point of view I had not experienced before. I could clearly see the hands of the proxies for the parents clasped over the altar with the child's proxy's hand on top. The direct physical sight of the child's hand touching both parents' hands got me thinking about what it means for a child to be sealed to her parents when the parents are no longer married. The thought occurred to me that when we marry, we each serve as a proxy to the other for Christ. The covenant we make is to God, not each other, to be a certain kind of spouse. Our willingness to continue in repentance and forgiveness to become increasingly more like Christ in our role is the thing that binds our children to us.
I don't know all the details of how things work out in the eternities, what they will look like, but I know that the celestial kingdom is not so much a place as a way of being. Zion is the pure in heart.
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