Garments...

I like to think of myself as a fairly open-minded, resilient, resourceful, happy person but I find myself a little put out by one of my roommates. She's a little older, served a mission umpteen years ago and we share the same bathroom - whenever I'm in there and she needs to use it she gives off the vibe of "how dare you be in there" but when she's in there and I need to use it, she'll apologize profusely and then take her dear sweet time about finishing up. She puzzles me, more so because she'll wander around the kitchen, dining room and front room wearing only her garments - on the one hand, she doesn't have anything I haven't already seen on the other hand, I think that's inappropriate - I certainly wouldn't streak around buck naked, which is pretty much what she's doing. She's apologized a couple of times for it but she still does it. I realize how we treat our garments has to do with how we were raised but still, lounging around in just your garments....

Maybe it's something I just have to get over.

A couple of weeks ago in Temple Prep we were talking about garments, and my teacher said that garments can be a physical and spiritual protection as well as a reminder of the covenants you've made, and they're not something to be taken lightly. I kind of figured that - if it wasn't something that was so super duper important to our eternal exaltation and you needed to be mature and ready enough to make and keep such sacred promises, I would have done it already. Not to say that I can't but rather I'm not quite ready just yet - we have some work to do.

It brought to mind my residents - being in the heart of Mormondom there are a lot of LDS patients we work with, it made me pause and wonder. Doesn't Satan have something better to do than work on a ninety plus year old person? How much trouble can they possibly get into? I asked one of the nurses I work with and she said that in the old people's case it's more of a reminder of the promises they made and a comfort for them. Hmmm.