Tuesday, December 3, 2013

How we almost couldn't get married


Time is a fickle thing. Sometimes I can't believe it's been two years, and then other times I feel like we've been married for much longer (in a good way).

In the two years that we've been married: Eric graduated from BYU-Idaho, I worked full-time for over a year, Eric joined the Idaho Falls Police Dept., we've lived in two apartments before buying our house, and we had our little Emmeline.

In remembrance of our day, I thought I'd share a little known anecdote about how dear old Murphy conspired against us.

About a week before our wedding, Eric and I decided to go to the temple together one last time before we got married.

The temple worker scanned our recommends, I was about to start walking back when I realized, the worker hadn't given Eric his recommend back yet.

After a few seconds, it was clear that something was amiss. The worker then said, "There seems to be a problem, will you wait in the waiting room for the temple president."

!?!?!?!?!?!

We had just both had our interviews so we could be sealed/married, so this was extra baffling. 

You can imagine the questions that went through our heads...

"What's wrong with Eric's recommend?" "Was the recommend not filled out correctly?" Did they think Eric was unworthy?" "Were we going to be able to get married?" "Is this a sign?"

Yep my brain went there. And it kept going in circles while they kept us waiting for 20 minutes or more.

There we sat amongst happy family members waiting to see two people sealed/married, while we sat worried that we wouldn't be able to have our own wedding.We completely missed our session, but forget about that, I was more worried about what this would mean for our sealing--I know we--er me--was overreacting, but it's what I do in this kind of situation.

Finally, the Temple President came to talk to us.

There are two different kinds of recommends, there is a living ordinance recommend and a regular recommend. The Living ordinance is for doing your own temple work and is a one-time use kinda deal, whereas the regular is good for 2 years to do work for the dead. (If you would like to know more, go here http://mormon.org/beliefs/church)

Eric's current recommend still had one year left, so he opted to not renew his regular recommend and just get the living ordinance. Well apparently,  you can't do that and the Stake President didn't know that. So when his living ordinance went through it changed the bar code for his regular recommend and didn't match the one he was carrying. The Temple President had called Eric's Stake President to figure out why the bar codes didn't match.

So, Eric would have to go back to the Stake President, and redo his interview and get the recommend with the matching bar code. Phew. I was so relieved. We were able to go to the next session and enjoy our evening. But just thinking about all the ways our wedding day could have gone wrong makes me ill. What if we hadn't decided to go to the temple a few days before our sealing!?! Would they have let us be married that day? Thank goodness, Heavenly Father was on our side and prompted us to go the temple! We were married October 8, 2011 without any hiccups.

It has been a great two years! And I'm sure life will be full anecdotes, mishaps and trials, but I'm glad I'm doing it alongside Eric.

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