Nauvoo
Dust scattered in the morning light as my mother fed lengths of blue gingham through her sewing machine. Newly converted to the Church, she used a few scraps and a borrowed pattern to create a bonnet and pinafore for my first 24th of July parade. She finished the final hem, tied the bonnet ribbons under my chin, and I ran outside to join the gathering crowd. I twirled and strutted in my lovely new dress until a neighbor boy scoffed, “You don’t have pioneer relatives. This is our parade.”
His words were careless and cruel, but the next few years revealed our family as the only converts in a ward of established Mormon families. With that realization, I hung my head a bit when my friends told their pioneer stories in Primary and felt distinctly alien during numerous sacrament meeting talks paying homage to the Saints who crossed the plains. I envied the other members’ multi-generational sense of belonging and ached for an equal birthright, a claim to God’s kingdom.
In my eleventh summer my dad rented a motor home, arranged for two weeks away from the office, and loaded up our family for the trek to Illinois. Through the dull colorless drive my brothers and I played Scrabble, fought for the best sleeping nooks, and complained about the unique stench of traveling with a toilet. Wyoming . . . Nebraska . . . Iowa . . . passed in a blur of boredom until we finally viewed the massive Mississippi River with Nauvoo calling from the opposite shore. My dad didn’t even search out a campground but pulled right into the middle of town. We escaped from our stuffy mobile prison and began exploring Nauvoo’s serene streets and homes.
As a serious bookaholic kid whose reality was as much Little House on the Prairie as the world of 1980, Nauvoo was heaven to me. I loved the restored homes and the quiet, clean streets. The wrinkled faces of the elderly missionaries crinkled with joy and enthusiasm as they reminisced, “My grandpa built this house with his father,” “My grandma sat in this highchair.” Suddenly the past seemed oh so close.
After days of drinking our fill of Nauvoo and Carthage, we attended the tiny Nauvoo ward before starting the long drive home the next day. An elderly gentleman quizzed us on all we had seen and done.
“Have you been to the temple site? No? You have to visit the temple site!”
He fired up his Pontiac and we followed to the abandoned field. Spilling out of the motor home we ran to the placard describing the building and destruction of the temple. I slowly rambled across the field, stood by the cornerstone and gazed out at the Mississippi. Unexpectedly, I had a rush of feeling, of kinship, of knowledge that these were my people. They built the temple to the same God I worship. They crossed those plains for me. I’d been an outsider and suddenly felt encircled with love. For a moment I was blinded by the setting sun and raised an arm to shield my tear-filled eyes. Our elderly friend shuffled over to where I stood and kicked a clump of dirt down the slope.
“We’re going to rebuild it one day. Probably in your lifetime. You wait and see.”
At that moment I made a solemn vow in my ten-year-old heart that I would be there when the temple rose again.
* * *
I cried when the new Nauvoo temple was announced, then eagerly followed its progress. Since three General Authorities lived in my ward (a half dozen in the stake), the neighborhood buzzed with plans to attend the open house and dedication. The head of the temple construction company, who also lived in our area, invited several of my friends out for private tours. But just as the open house dates were announced, I delivered my fifth son—my own little construction project.
In spite of adjusting to a new baby in an already busy household, I insistently pestered my sweet husband about the odyssey to Nauvoo. “We’ll just throw the kids in the car and GO!” (With baby crying the whole way.) “We’ll take baby and get on a plane!” (Who will watch the kids and how will we pay for it?) Finally, the stack of hospital bills and daily practicalities won over. We were staying home.
Like a starving prisoner, I devoured my friends’ reports on the open house. They spoke of miracles and angels and the profound presence of the Spirit as they explored the new temple. Some of my friends traveled to Nauvoo two or three times, and for the General Authorities it was just one of many temple open houses they attended that year. I listened ardently, but my enthusiasm was tinged with jealousy. “Why?” I asked God. “Why do some people get so many spiritual experiences and I have so few? Couldn’t You spread things out a bit more?”
Pioneer stories and temple reports dominated sacrament meetings and Relief Society that spring. I longed to share my own connection to Nauvoo, but felt like my experience as a little girl standing in the field paled in comparison to those whose ancestors had built the original temple and who now walked the halls of the new sanctuary. Convinced that certain callings or family connections would have made the trip possible, I envied those who had, when I had not. Again, I felt like a drifter scuttling along the edges of the Church and peering in on those who really belonged.
I convinced myself that attending the dedication would be the grand redeeming spiritual experience that would both connect me to the past and secure my position as a modern Latter-day Saint. Week after week, my longing for Nauvoo tortured me until my husband pleaded, “Let it go.”
I tried.
The week of the dedication came and I was doing the usual evening routine of putting the kids to bed. They laughed in the tub, chased each other in the hallway, and fought over the toothpaste. As I sat on the floor drinking in baby’s freshly bathed head on my shoulder and my beautiful boys leap-frogging over my legs, I was struck with profound joy. This is where I was supposed to be—this is what I needed to be doing.
A voice spoke to my heart, “You will have all the spiritual experiences you need in this life.” I laughed out loud in jubilation as every blessing, both spiritual and physical, flickered through my mind. I didn’t have to fight for a place in the kingdom. Christ had opened the gate, and taking His name at baptism secured my divine genealogy. I had enough. I was enough.
A few days later I strode into the stake center for the broadcast of the Nauvoo Temple dedication and balanced on a teetering metal chair between my two oldest sons. Fearing that I would dissolve into a sobbing, self-pitying mess, my husband reached over and put a concerned hand on my shoulder. “Are you going to be OK?”
I smiled, waving my pack of tissues. “I’m happy. I’m fine.”
The basketball standard and whitewashed bricks of the gym faded as music rang through the hall and video footage of the temple filled large white screens. President Gordon B. Hinckley spoke eloquently of Nauvoo both past and present. Tears streamed down my face as I stood as one with my fellow Saints; I wept because these were my people, this was my temple. We gathered to worship the same God.
Nauvoo still calls to me. And one day I’ll walk my children down Parley Street to the gate of the temple. But in the meantime, I’ll teach them to look for the Spirit, not just in the grand venues, but in the hallways and fields and corners of their lives.
Michelle Lehnardt never folds laundry and her car is a mess. She runs through the streets of Salt Lake City, takes lots of photos, plays Uno with her five fabulous boys and buys way too many dresses for the little princess. Her husband is the most romantic man in the world because he does all the Costco shopping AND hauls it into the house (sorry to make you jealous, girls). She writes at Scenes from the Wild and has an occasional byline in newspapers and magazines.
