Camille Kathleen Waite
"Dear Father in Heaven," I begin my prayer. I am on my knees, alone, in my closet. I offer my thanks for how greatly the Lord has blessed me in my life. I enumerate many of the blessings for which I am particularly grateful at this time. No matter how low I feel, there are always blessings from the Lord. There is always gratitude in my heart when it comes to the Lord.
"I am grateful for the Atonement of thy Son," here I pause with the name of the Savior in my mind hesitant to voice this name. The emotion of true understanding washes over me. I am addressing the Father of our Savior. The Father of He who suffered for me- because of my sins. I am about to say the name of the Son who died the most painful death of all deaths that I might live. He put aside His will and suffered the weight of all mankind's sin and sacrificed his own life to pay the price of justice and break the bands of death. And here am I, one who contributed to His pain, about to speak His name to His Father ... and mine.
I know the grief of a parent watching his or her child die. I know the tenderness of a parent's heart and the sacred feelings attached to those children whose lives are cut short to fulfill the greater purposes of the Father's plan. Their names are sacred. To me, Camille's name is sacred. I speak it and want it spoken but only in respectful ways.
At this moment in my prayer, just before I speak the name of the Savior, I know the Father feels the same.
How often is the name of our Savior spoken with disregard, disrespect and even in anger? I can't begin to explain how it would make me feel if someone spoke Camille's name is such tones. Imagine the most sensitive part of your soul, that which is most dear to you, being desecrated.
In an instant, in the middle of this prayer in my closet, I better understand the Lord's commandment in Exodus 20:7 "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain."
I thankfully have never uttered the sacred names of deity in ways that I would now regret. But, I will never speak His name, the name of my Savior, the Author and Finisher of my faith, the Son of my Eternal Father, the same again.
