Log Cabins and Temples

I have always been amazed and humbled by the lives of pioneer women. You would think that the hard work that was required to meet basic needs would leave no time or energy for these women to create and beautify.

But somewhere deep inside a woman's heart is the need to make any house, even a crude shelter dug into the side of a hill or a blanket spread under a handcart, a home. I can not imagine that after doing all of the necessary tasks to clothe, feed, protect and provide for a family; sitting down with needle, thimble and fabric in hand and carefully piecing a quilt. But then, I can imagine it because I have that innate need inside of me. That after the work is done (and sometimes even when it isn't), to create something tangible that is still there tomorrow after the meal is eaten, the clean clothes are worn and returned to the dirty clothes hamper and more crumbs appear on the kitchen floor.

So it is possible to understand why women with their families uprooted, their hands calloused by hard work and their hearts broken from burying children in shallow graves in the middle of the prairie, would want to take scraps and create something beautiful that would represent warmth and love. Quilts - a metaphor for taking the pieces that God has handed us, carefully fitting them together, adding love for warmth, the strong backing of the gospel, intricate quilting of faithful living and the binding of eternal sealings in the temples of our God.


Last night it was with a humble heart that I recognized the Log Cabin quilt block pattern in the stained glass windows of the Draper Utah Temple. The middle square represents the hearth or heart of the home with the other pieces framing it with strength and protection. Nothing fancy, just straight and true. A tribute to the pioneer women who settled these valleys because they loved the Lord and they followed the prophet.


LDS women, past and present, are not so different after all. We love our families and we love the Lord. It is why, in these beautiful temples dedicated to the Lord as His House, we make sacred covenants in order to be sealed eternally.


On this snowy March morning, wrapped in a quilt with my dishwasher humming in the background, I pay tribute to those pioneer women who worked so hard to create beauty out of hardship and testimony out of trials.