Yesterday I went to a viewing for a baby in my ward. She came to earth for five and a half hours and then departed. On her parents’ faces, pictured just after the birth, I saw grief and joy.

Yesterday I also went to the temple and did initiatory work. This is the place where body and spirit come together, that initiatory booth. When I go I sometimes feel the presence of the women in my family on the other side of the veil: my grandmothers, my husbands’ grandmothers, my mother-in-law. Women I cannot see who bless my life, who made the gift of my body possible.

I do not see my body as a gift most of the time. It’s not how I want it to look: it’s scarred and dimpled and rolled. But circling around in the initiatory booth, I am reminded that God gave me my body, a home for my spirit, and the two intertwine. And I am reminded that where I am right now, flawed but still entering the temple of God, is enough to receive great blessings.

I think about the sweet mother in my ward who gave her baby a body. She endured pregnancy knowing that the life within her would not last, but she did it anyway, so this baby could have a body, and come to earth. What a gift, what a sacrifice. Her daughter will one day be resurrected, with a whole and perfect body, and grow up to call her mother blessed.