I have scheduled my departure for my Temple appointment for 90 minutes before the session starts. This gives me a 30 minute cushion, since I’ve found it takes about 60 minutes from the time I pull out of my driveway until I leave the New Name Booth. Making plans remains a great way to give God a good laugh.
With one thing and another, I ended up being about 8 minutes late getting into the car. No big deal — that leaves me 22 minutes of cushion, and that’s what the cushion is for. Then, there’s a flagger on my way to the freeway, which adds a couple more minutes to my trip — 20 minutes of cushion left. Then, habit gets in the way, and I take the southbound freeway exit rather than northbound (I only go north once every two weeks, because the only thing I go north for is the Temple, so it’s very out-of-habit for me), which eats about five more minutes of cushion — I’m down to 15 minutes of cushion.
But now I’m northbound, everything’s fine. I get to the (Truck) crossing, and there is nobody in the Nexus line in front of me. The border person looks at whatever comes up on the screen, glances in the back seat, and says “Thank you.” and I’m through in record time. It’s almost like it was too easy.
He looked in the back seat, which brought to mind that that’s where I leave my temple clothes — right behind the driver’s seat. And then it hits me — I forgot my temple clothes. I can’t do the session without my clothes, and it’s now exactly an hour before the session starts. And it takes 15 minutes to get from my house to the border. Which wouldn’t be a problem if I had 30 minutes of cushion left. But I don’t. I have 15 minutes of cushion. So I complete my shortest visit to Canada where I was admitted into the country, have a short and genial conversation with the US Customs lady, and go home. All dressed up, and no place to go.
However, I’m lined up to go to the youth Temple trip tomorrow to help out, so I’m still going to get some templing into my week. I’m frustrated. But it’ll be okay.
