I have not been to the temple in about 30 years.

That will probably surprise many readers who know I am a believing Latter-day Saint, and one for whom genealogy and salvation for the dead are such important features of life and the gospel. But I want to give my perspective on some of the temple-related topics that have been so prominent in recent weeks because I haven’t seen anything that comes close to my perspective, and I don’t think I can write about it without being candid: I do not go to the temple.

This does not mean that I do not value the temple and all it stands for. The desire to go to the temple was one of the reasons I went on a mission – I can remember the moment it occurred to me that the one would lead to the other; I was walking across a parking lot near the Smith Field House on BYU campus. It was a wet day, but the finding of a solution to “how can I go to the temple?” when I wasn’t getting married in the foreseeable future (to that point, I had been on exactly one date, ever) made the day feel sunny and warm.

My mission was not what it could or should have been, but access to the temple went a long way toward making it worthwhile. I’m glad I went to the temple. My covenants were and are important to me. I believe in what is taught in the temple. I submit many, many well documented records of the deceased every year so that their ordinances can be done and so that you who do go to the temple regularly have that opportunity: although we’re encouraged to go to the temple frequently by appeals to how important it is to us individually, there is really no cause for returning to the temple if you aren’t performing ordinances for someone who needs your proxy assistance. I support the temple in every way of which I am capable.

And my more-than-reluctance to attend has nothing to do with the former unequal language and expectations. Perhaps those things would have disturbed me more if I’d thought about them, but I’ve never been able to get past what really bothers me to consider the problem of the language.

I was made uncomfortable as a single woman in the temple from the second time I went there, my first return to the temple after my own endowment, before I left for my mission. I did not know the conventions when I was approached by a worker outside the dressing room and invited to be a witness. He thought I was there as a young bride, and when I told him I was there as a young missionary, he was clearly uncomfortable – he didn’t want to dis-invite me, but his tone of voice when he said he would try to find someone willing to kneel with me let me know I was a complication for which there was no easy solution. And I could hardly take part in the prayer circle – the few times I stood, an ordinance worker had to beg for someone to stand with me; I always caused a delay, a delay that grew more embarrassing by the second until some old man, with obvious reluctance, stood. I stopped trying to be a full participant after a few such episodes.

I stopped going altogether when I could no longer avoid the conviction that the blessings of the temple were closed to me, that the Church, if possibly not God Himself, saw me as a failure and offered me not the slightest shred of an alternative purpose in life: I had and would have no husband to hearken to, could not fill the measure of my creation, and had no business seeking blessings for a non-existent posterity in time, if not in eternity. (Yes, there was always the possibility of post-mortal associations, but that has never seemed entirely certain to me: That oft-repeated assurance that “no blessing will be withheld blah blah blah” seems to have no solid basis beyond Lorenzo Snow’s unwillingness to accept the possibility that his sister Eliza, a righteous woman who had done so much for the Kingdom and who had been the wife of two prophets, could lack eternal increase when she had not borne children in mortality. That “doctrine” seemingly based on wishful thinking has been expanded and embroidered steadily ever since, until you now hear it applied to both men and women, explicitly relieved from any responsibility for refusing to make a less than ideal selection of marriage partner – but I have yet to find any satisfactory revealed or reasoned support for that assertion.)

Anyway. There has never been and seemingly never will be anyone waiting for me in the Celestial Room. Time after time, I would find myself, in effect, learning all I could, covenanting all I should, doing all I would to receive the welcome of the Lord, then passing from one sphere to another and finding myself a stranger, looking at couples very much together, but me standing alone with no reason to be there, or anywhere else for that matter.

Other single adults, both men and women, seem to find purpose and meaning in the temple, alone, but I couldn’t. I had to stop going. I have found no reason for going again – to go now, for the idle curiosity of seeing what changes have been made recently, seems very wrong to me.

Here might be a good point to insert something that I will probably repeat below: These are all questions I have wrestled with literally for decades. If you’re tempted to tell me how to resolve my longstanding difficulties after you have given it all of 12 seconds of thought, please don’t. You must see how presumptuous that would be, and potentially how offensive.

I’ve never seen this perspective voiced anywhere. It has never been brought up in any church discussion of which I have been a part – almost certainly because it doesn’t occur to married people, and the Church’s singles program, operated by married couples (!), exists primarily to throw single men and women together for potential mating, not to discuss and solve the special religious concerns of single adults.

Here are some more random temple-related thoughts that I have not seen in temple-related discussions:

1. I like the veil. I understand the objections women have expressed about the physical discomfort and the symbolism they reject – those are valid objections, but I don’t share them. I never feel comfortable in my own skin around other people, and instead of the veil being a barrier between God and me, it has been a refuge for me with God, a barrier between me and the strangers around me.

2. For that reason I want to be veiled for burial. When my mother stepped forward to veil my grandmother for her burial, I realized that she felt it was a special thing, the very last personal service she could render for her beloved mother. To say I “looked forward” to doing that for my mother when the time came would give the wrong connotation, but it was a sacred opportunity that I can never forget. And while there won’t be anyone who loves me in the same way to render that service for me, I still want it. So sue me.

3. I do want to be buried in my temple robes. I’m surprised by the numbers whom I’ve read recently saying they don’t want that for themselves, because I do want it. And that isn’t only because I haven’t bought a stitch of new clothing of any kind for four years – if I died today and had to be buried in something other than my temple robes, it would have to be some random rag from my closet with no meaning and no beauty. Rather, I want my robes because it’s how I want to face eternity: “Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.”

4. While not temple-related, this is related to points 2 and 3: I do not want a funeral – more strongly, I want not to have a funeral. I hope someone is willing to dedicate my grave, and if anyone wants to sing a graveside hymn, that’s okay. At least it’s okay if you sing it up to tempo. No dirge-like hymns, please, even if this would be the one place a dirge would otherwise be acceptable! But if I were to have a funeral, I would welcome a sermon on some aspect of the Plan of Salvation. I’m a traditionalist that way, although I seem to be one of the last. Funerals should point the way the deceased has gone, and invite survivors to follow; funerals are among the few moments in our lives when our hearts are open to the Beyond in a serious way, as something other than the imagined continuation of 21st century middle class American life with your nuclear family.

I’m a traditionalist in most things related to the temple. That is, I am exceedingly uncomfortable with the way some speak of the temple, especially online where we don’t know who is listening or what they make of it. So please exercise great conservatism. Even what I’ve said here could make me uncomfortable at some other time – please let what I’ve discussed be the outer limit of what you say. I may edit your comment if you make me uncomfortable, especially if you aren’t a regular reader and contributor to Keepa.

And again, please don’t give me any personal advice or magic solutions to my difficulties. If you know me well enough to give advice, you’ll write personally. If you don’t know me that well, advice is not solicited. Thank you.