What I Tell My Kids When They Ask What I Do in the Temple

Three of you wrote after last Sunday's post about temple dedications, in almost the same words, to ask what you say when your kid wants to know what goes on inside. Not what a dedication is for. What you actually do in there, the night you leave with a bag and come home quiet.

I've been turning it over all week and I think the answer is shorter than most of us fear. It's also more particular than a script. The part that can be said out loud comes first, because there's more of it than people assume.

What you can say plainly about the temple

The temple is God's house, I say, and I go there to make promises to Him and to do something for people who died before they could, like being baptized, and families can be sealed there so they stay a family after this life. Everyone wears white and the building is quiet on purpose, and I've prayed about big things in there and felt answered. All of that is true and none of it is hard to say to a seven-year-old.

With Caleb, who is eleven, I can say more about the part that's coming for him. The year he turns twelve he'll go to the baptistry with the youth, and I can tell him which door, what he'll wear, who will help him and how the baptisms go one after another. He's already asked me twice about the door, and a kid who asks about the door deserves a concrete answer.

President Hunter put it in a way I've kept in my head for years:

"Teach them more earnestly and more comfortably the things we can appropriately say about the purposes of the house of the Lord."

He said comfortably, which is the word I have to work at, since my voice climbs about half an octave whenever Lily says temple from the back seat.

My brother asked the same question for years

I grew up in St. George with a temple in the middle of town and a dad who went in it every few weeks. My brother Sam is the youngest of us five and he's forty now, a dentist like our father, but when he was eight he was a boy who needed to know how everything worked, the kind who took apart the vacuum and opened the back of the clock radio. I was fifteen that spring and had been left in charge one Friday evening while my parents went to the temple, and Sam wouldn't go to bed. He sat on the stairs in his pajamas until the garage door went up.

Dad came in still in his white shirt, with the gray vinyl temple bag in one hand, and Sam asked him straight out what he did in there.

Dad set the bag on the counter, never in a hurry to answer anything, which drove my mother up the wall. "I'll tell you what I can," he said. Then he gave Sam three things, and I could repeat them to you now. It was God's house. He'd sat quietly and made promises to God. He'd also done some work for a woman who died a long time ago and never had the chance to do it herself, and he'd thought about Sam and me while he sat there.

Sam said, "That's it?" And Dad said, "That's what I can tell you. The rest I'm keeping for when you can have it yourself, and I'll be glad to tell you why when you get there."

Sam was furious. He went upstairs and shut his door harder than he needed to.

Sam kept asking for years, in the truck and at the dinner table and once, memorably, across a church parking lot with half the ward walking past, and every time Dad gave the same three things in nearly the same words, kindly, with no sigh. Sam told me years later that by twelve he could say them along with Dad, and Dad let him. He said the sameness was what he remembered. Dad never got cagey and never made him feel stupid for asking.

Why some things wait

With my own kids I try not to use the word secret, since that sounds like something is being hidden from them. Emma has seen my wedding pictures and heard every story, and still nobody can tell her what it's like to stand in the sealing room in your own dress. Some things you can describe and she still has to arrive at them herself.

The scripture I think of when I try to explain why we're careful is from the Doctrine and Covenants, where the Lord is talking about the house He wants built:

"And inasmuch as my people build a house unto me in the name of the Lord, and do not suffer any unclean thing to come into it, that it be not defiled, my glory shall rest upon it; Yea, and my presence shall be there, for I will come into it, and all the pure in heart that shall come into it shall see God." (D&C 97:15-16)

Nothing in those verses tells anyone to keep quiet, and I won't pretend they do. They're about a house kept clean for His presence. That's enough to make me careful with my words about it, and I lean on that when I'm asked why I don't say more.

Say what's coming, not only what's closed

Early on I answered a hard temple question with "we don't talk about that." Caleb was about six, and he took it to mean he'd done something wrong by asking.

What I say now is that there are things I'll tell him when he's older, and then I give him the next step. The baptistry comes first. The endowment is for adults, after a young person is ready and has chosen it. Dad and I will tell him when that time comes and what to expect. Caleb got a rough calendar and it settled him more than any explanation did.

Whatever you decide to say, decide it once and say it the same way each time they ask.

My own feelings about being in there are mine to share, so I share them. I come out calmer than I went in, I tell the kids, and sometimes I've cried and not been sad. Nobody has to hold that back for later, and I think it's the part they remember.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the temple a secret?

I'd say no, and I wouldn't use that word with a child. The Church talks openly about what temples are for and who goes and why, and it invites the public to open houses before a dedication. What gets kept quiet is the wording and detail of the ordinances, out of respect, the way I'd keep quiet about something given to me in trust.

How young is too young to start talking about it?

Whenever they first notice it. Lily called the St. George temple the castle until she was four and we let her, since it was a perfectly good place to start. A picture on the wall or a song or a slow drive past the grounds all count.

What if my child asks something I really don't know how to answer?

Tell them you want to think about how to say it, and then do come back. I've told Caleb "ask me tomorrow" more than once, and he does, usually at breakfast, with his cereal halfway to his mouth.

Can I tell my kids what the temple feels like to me?

Yes, and I think you should. Your feelings aren't part of what's kept quiet. Say you feel peaceful there, that you've prayed about hard things, that you thought about them while you sat. They'll hold on to that long after they've forgotten the rest of what you said.

with love, Melissa