The Cleansing Power of the Spirit

When I was 20, I was raped. I won’t go into that story itself, but for years I thought the story was that I had put myself into a situation where I had sex with a man and didn’t really want to. At the time of the #metoo moment, I learned that I had indeed been raped, but I still blamed myself for putting myself into a vulnerable situation. 

One night soon after, I was working in the temple and there was time to do some initiatory work as a patron. Our temple matron had spoken to us before our shift and encouraged us to really look for the cleansing power of the Spirit that night in the temple. 

As I was seated in the cubicle for washing, the ordinance worker was performing the ceremony and I had an overwhelming feeling of being fully cleansed from that “sin” at that moment. I knew that I was absolutely not to blame for that offense forty years before and I knew that my Savior was trying to tell me that He loved me and to be free of the guilt and shame. Both women in that cubicle that night were so viscerally touched by the Spirit that tears wouldn’t stop.