I love General Conference.  I didn’t when I was a kid, because really, who is excited as a 5-year-old, or even a 15-year-old, to have their normal 3 hours of church expanded to 10 hours stretching across an entire weekend?

But I love it now.  I love it for several reasons.  It makes me better.  It never fails to be directed precisely at that question I have brought and laid at the feet of the Lord, asking Him to help me understand.  So it is this time.

And in the midst of this, I confess a monumental idiocy that only the glare of public ridicule can excise from my soul.  Elder Bednar is talking about the temple, and the greatness of temple blessings, and the necessity of attending more and more often.  This is the second of these sorts of talks in this conference.  I suspect that it will have the effect of increasing temple attendance, and I have for some reason chosen to be annoyed by this.

Oh, everything they are saying is absolutely accurate.  Attendance at the temple really does make me a better person.  It really does make my life richer and fuller.  It really does consume almost no important time and gives back a thousandfold what I invest in it.  I attend the temple at least once a week, and almost every week twice or three times.

No, what I object to is that this frequency of temple attendance makes me unusually righteous, and I don’t want other people to do what I do, because it will make me less special.  And, the more people that go, the longer wait there will be for me to finish my service there and get on to the rest of my life.

I suck.  That is all.

I apologize to all of you for my selfishness, and my rejection of the Atonement as the thing that makes me truly special, and the persistent undercurrent of “I’m not really good enough” that steals the sweetness from those things I do that truly are of good character and of worth to others.

I shall repent, and do better.

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