The Thousandth Time May Prove the Charm

by Kerry Blair

Since I run with a den of wolves (and use the word “run” in only the most metaphorical sense) I am well-indoctrinated in the Law of the Pack. The Cub Scout follows Akela . . . The Cub Scout gives goodwill. Got it. While I know the law and the promise and most of the handbook by heart, the eight-year-old boys in my charge are still struggling to remember the motto: Do Your Best. If they were girls, they’d have not only memorized those three words, they’d have internalized them for life.

I don’t know what it is about the female of the species – particularly the female of the LDS species – but “best” doesn’t seem to be good enough. By the time we’re adolescents, most of us think we should be perfect.

Please tell me why we’re like that. Despite what you sometimes hear, we don’t learn it at church. Our leaders – from the prophet on down – repeatedly counsel us to prioritize, simplify, choose Mary-lives over Martha’s. And yet we persevere in our craziness.

Maybe we just haven’t heard the message enough times. In a little gem called Mountain Interlude, Robert Frost wrote: Our very life depends on everything’s recurring till we answer from within. The thousandth time may prove the charm. Yesterday I stood on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, looking up at the temple and recalling in vivid detail when that “thousandth time” first struck me.

I was a new stake Relief Society president in an area that had recently endured a firestorm of controversy and hurt feelings. The sisters were divided, distrustful, and bewildered. Under the stake president’s direction, we’d planned an evening designed to provide fellowship and hopefully healing. I wanted everything to be perfect. To make it so, we worked feverishly for days, paying attention to every detail. Because harmony and beauty invite the spirit, we’d even color-coordinated everything – from the decorations down to the table coverings and even the food. (Believe me when I say that everything was just peachy.)

One hour before the big event, the only thing left to do was to set up the cake we’d ordered as the centerpiece. My counselors went home to change clothes, leaving me alone in a hall that was beautiful, peaceful, and completely quiet. As I opened the pastry box, a scream pierced the air.

The one screaming was me. The cake was blue. Not pastel blue or “just a little blue” or even robin-egg’s blue, but Cub Scout blue-and-gold-uglier-than-sin blue. If it had been slathered with slime and adorned with live roaches I couldn’t have looked at it with more horror. Unless I acted fast, the whole evening would be ruined by that cake.

You have to be an LDS woman – or Martha Stewart – to understand that last paragraph.

I ran home, grabbed all the white frosting and cake decorating bags I had in the cupboard (everybody has a year’s supply of white frosting, am I right?) and sped back to the church. I was crying in frustration as I struggled to get the stupid key to activate the stupid green light that would give me 1.6 seconds to open the stupid glass door. I couldn’t do it. The frosting, bags, key and I all hit the concrete in the same moment. I’d had it. The evening was ruined and I was too tired and too stressed to care.

That’s when I experienced one of the most meaningful miracles of my whole life. Through my tears I caught a glimpse of bright and shining gold. It was the setting sun glinting off letters firmly affixed to the side of the building: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I know, it doesn’t sound like much of a miracle to me either, but it must have been the thousandth time I’d seen the name of my chosen church because my heart really did answer from within. In fact, it pounded with such surety I could finally see the situation – and myself – rightly. I was serving in His church, so what would Jesus do? Possibly he wouldn’t weep over a wrong-colored cake. While I didn’t see a vision, I did suddenly recall with vision-like clarity every story I’d read about Christ’s mortal ministry. Sermon on the Mount: no centerpieces there. No chairs, even. No linen tablecloths and matching napkins when Christ broke bread with the apostles. No sparkling punch for the woman at the well. No cake for the five thousand. (Bread of life? Enough and to spare.) Then, because the Spirit knows me so well, it went a little further and asked: Can you remember a time when Christ said to his apostles, “How does everything look? How did I do? Was it good enough? Do you think they liked me?”

It was a paradigm shift of eternal proportion. With occasional lapses of judgment (read: sanity) I have never been the same.

It all came back to me yesterday on Temple Square. Perhaps it was the thousandth time I’d looked up at those spires and contemplated the eternity they represent. At any rate, I stood transfixed and unable to control the tears of awe and gratitude that ran down my cheeks. When a tourist kindly stopped to ask me what I was sobbing about, I spent some time telling her – enough that we sat down together on a bench – before walking her over to where the nearest missionaries waited.

As I hurried away a few minutes later to meet my son and a dear friend for lunch, I prayed that this good-hearted stranger would recognize truth the first time she heard it. If she did, I’m confident that 999 temple-visits later she’ll finally understand exactly what I was trying to say to her.

And if you you read this blog enough times, maybe eventually you will, too.