Hungering for the temple

     On a Sunday evening last November, the day after Wendy and I arrived back home from our temple trip while Payson was closed for cleaning, having visited 13 temples in an 11 day period, between us completing 32 endowments and a number of other temple ordinances, I said to Wendy, “I am feeling something I never fully felt before.  I am missing being in the temple.  I am feeling that we need to go back as soon as possible, like tomorrow.”
     I sensed that the Father had blessed me to cross a threshold to a higher level of understanding and appreciation of the temple.  This feeling about the temple has persisted, like being drawn there magnetically, especially to experience the endowment as a patron again and again, each time anticipating new insights and understandings.
     Wendy says that she acquired that same feeling a number of years ago beginning as she utilized the temple to give her strength to cope with the difficult challenges in her family.  But for me, I now wonder if I may have attended the temple for a lot of years motivated more by duty.  The temple has felt like home for a lot of years, but this spiritual passion and hunger seems new.
     I am trying to understand the bases for this motivation.  Here are some of my thoughts:
     1) Continuing commitment to what I have termed the Four Pillars of Family History work, with being present and participating in the ordinances in the temple as a culmination.  These are:
     – Doing research to identify and document family members who have died.
     – Doing temple ordinances for these persons.
     – Helping others develop family history research skills (volunteering at the Family History Center)
     – Serving as a temple ordinance worker, to help others experience temple ordinances for their kindred dead.
     2) Having experienced and being a part of a covenant marriage, where I see commitment, unselfishness, and sacrifice every day for family and for the marriage relationship.
     3) Attending the temple often.  Meeting our current goal of doing two endowments a week each plus performing a weekly temple shift as ordinances workers is helping.
     4) The new endowment film dramatizations now available draw my attention and seem to stimulate additional sacred gospel insights and learning.
     5) Feeling a challenge to try to learn more about the meaning of the ordinances, particularly the symbolic elements, through prayer and study.
     6) Sensing a greater understanding and appreciation for the atonement of Christ as expressed in the temple ordinances.