One Word

Before Ben and I were married in the Salt Lake Temple, I made my personal vows in a ceremony two days before our wedding day, also in the temple, with my parents, and his, there as well. In the Mormon church, this is called "taking out one's endowments." It is a sacred rite of passage.

What was embarrassing is this: Men sit on one side of the room and women sit on the other. Holy instructions and scriptures are given. From the story of Adam and Eve. Eve was a virgin; so was I. As I listened to the biblical text being read on the day-before-the-night-before my marriage, the only word in my head was a four letter one. I turned red. This was not a word I knew anything about as a nineteen-year-old girl. I blocked it and I was shocked that my own imagination was betraying me. Clear my thoughts, clean and pure. But there it was again. A word I had never spoken out loud. I turned a deeper red. I was sure that people were starting to wonder why I kept blushing.

Embarrassed? Fever? Yeah, both. Once again, when I was being asked to stand and make sacred covenants, this little word kept appearing in the most holy of moments, pulling me away from the marriage of Adam and Eve to the allure of the snake. I tried to stay focused on how my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had been married before me. Bam, the word. The dance between sacred and profane only heats up.

In this very public place I was privately battling my own demon. Nobody had warned me about this. They all knew what I would be doing in two nights. This word that all our parents knew but didn't say.