Weight

This weekend we visited our friends in Sheboygan. I enjoyed every moment of being with them. Friday night, after the kids were in bed, I went grocery shopping with Ben, and on a whim we watched a really funny movie (Knight and Day). Perfect.

Saturday, I traveled to the Chicago temple with Ben, the ward's seminary students, and some other ward leaders. I spent two quiet hours alone in the waiting room while they did baptisms, and I read a book (the latest Joseph Smith biography) studying each page. It was a peaceful day. That night Ben, Suzanne, Mirjam, and I went out for dinner together at a small Mexican place as thick fog rolled in from Lake Michigan.

The next morning we went to church together, and Ben delivered a wonderful, calm, thoughtful sermon on the atonement. "In the temple rests the power and the means to achieve the consummate purpose of the atonement": to just get back home to God and Jesus Christ. They just want us to be with them. He ended by noting that as each of us becomes one with Jesus Christ, we also grow closer to each other, becoming unified among ourselves. We all have our weaknesses, we all have our faults and our problems, he said, and we need to help each other and support each other, not criticize each other, and become unified and one with each other (specifically referring to his ward family). It was very well put, and a great little twist on the end of the sermon.

Ben was recently called to be bishop of his ward (he's only my age, with four small kids). I noticed he was generally calmer and full of thought. I noticed how other people automatically (subconsciously) looked to him for direction and decisions. (And he also mentioned the burden of criticism if someone didn't agree with something.) At least once during the weekend I heard him say, "This calling is really hard," exhaling as he did it, almost in exasperation.

When Ben came home after church on Sunday, after interviewing some people in the ward, I noticed his head hanging low from the weight of his calling. It reminded my of the mental image I had from a Truman Madsen talk, about the fullest, heaviest heads of wheat hanging the lowest. I mentioned to Ben about how someone once chided the prophet Joseph Smith for looking down and that he should cheer up. Joseph's reply was that if he had as much weighing on his mind as the prophet did (the weight of the entire church), is head would hang low, too. Ben mentioned the hardest part is not being able to talk to his wife about some of the more difficult parts of the job (when people confess things to him).

I tried to lift his spirits, talking to him, as much as I could, while not getting in the way. I felt like they sincerely enjoyed our company, and we certainly enjoyed being there with them. Mirjam and our kids didn't want to leave. Their kids asked when they could come visit us. It was a good weekend with our friends. We just hung out, let the kids play together (they all had a lot of fun together, and not a single fight), spent time talking and catching up, went out to dinner, played guitar together, watched Lost and a movie together, and just generally enjoyed each others' company.