Temple Mirrors

I’m pausing in my book reading right now to finish reading the talks from the October General Conference before we have the April one in a week. Today I read five talks on my round-trip. One of the talks I read was “Temple Mirrors of Eternity: A Testimony of Family.” It is a very lovely talk, but it made me remember the mirrors at our wedding, and that made me laugh.

In the rooms in LDS temples where marriages are performed there are two mirrors on opposite walls. When mirrors are placed like that and you stand between them you can see an eternity of you going in each direction. It’s a symbol of how the ceremony ties all of our past generations to us, and when you turn around and it ties you to all your future generations. It’s a way to try and visualize eternity.

At our wedding the officiant asked us to stand between the mirrors and asked if we could see ourselves going on for eternity. Brett, being the honest man that he is, said, “No.” And we couldn’t. There was a beautiful chandelier between our line of sight and the mirror. And lying at that time didn’t seem like a good idea to him. So the officiant had us scoot over a little so the chandelier wasn’t in the way.

Brett also wisely decided that while the officiant was giving us counsel on how to have a happy marriage was not the time to correct me when I whispered to him that he’d never bought me candy (Brett was told to keep writing me notes, bringing me flowers, and buying me candy, and he’d never bought me candy as far as I knew, he had that morning but I didn’t know that yet).

When I see the mirrors in the temple I will always remember our wedding and the view of eternity they provide. But I will also always remember Brett standing there looking straight into a chandelier and honestly saying he couldn’t see himself.