My Thomas S. Monson Experience

This was a difficult and yet rewarding conference for me, mainly because Gordon B. Hinckley’s absence seemed almost like an open wound, and I wasn’t quite ready to jump on the Thomas S. Monson train.

I didn’t realize just how hard it would be for me to make this transition.

I hope this doesn’t come across as faithless or sniping, but President Monson’s style has never really been my cup of tea, figuratively speaking. I think the problem is that I’m not a particularly sentimental guy, and I appreciated President Hinckley’s no-nonsense delivery, whereas President Monson can seem mawkish and syrupy in comparison. He has such an odd, affected, almost Muppet-like speech pattern, and the endless tearjerking stories about miracles with widows always seemed aimed at someone else, not me. Believe me, I’ve met a whole lot of Someone Elses who adore President Monson and are thrilled to see him as the new President of the Church. But after his cutesy ear-wiggling story at the Priesthood Session, I began to feel a pit of lead somewhere deep in my gut. Oh, dear, I thought. Is there something wrong with me? If I’m bugged by the President of the Church and find him somewhat annoying, does that mean I’m losing my faith?

During each session as every General Authority stood up to sing his praises, it felt like overkill to me. Methought they did protest too much. Then, listening to President Monson himself speak during the Sunday morning session, I started to feel something truly rancid. I really don’t like this guy, I thought. He’s going to drive me crazy for the next fifteen years. I shared these thoughts with my wife and other family members, and everyone was surprised by how deep my feelings on this were. So was I. I’ve had no experiences with President Monson that would justify this kind of animosity. Indeed, I’ve met him on several occasions, and he has always been kind and gracious. I had no reason to feel what I was feeling, but I was feeling it all the same.

Sunday afternoon, my wife and I attended conference live at the Conference Center. When President Monson walked in, all 21,000 attendees stood up out of respect for the Prophet. I felt a little silly. President Monson seemed like a usurper, a pretender. Why are we standing up for this guy? Where’s the real prophet? President Hinckley, why couldn’t you have stuck around just a little while longer?

It occurred to me that almost everyone who ends up leaving the Church, whether in modern or ancient times, does so out of allegiance to a prophet that they can’t seem to let go, and they reject living prophets in the name of dead ones. Thus Christ was pilloried by followers of Abraham, and Joseph Smith was and is consistently rejected in the name of Christ. I remember when Elder George P. Lee was excommunicated back in the 1980s, and his fury at President Benson for not being President Kimball. In every time of transition, there are a handful of complainers who walk away. There are those who thought Joseph Fielding Smith would destroy the Church after President McKay died. There were plenty who thought Ezra Taft Benson’s ascendancy to the church presidency was a sure sign of the apocalypse. And every time, the Church rolls forward, leaving the disgruntled few to kick against the pricks and fight against God.

I didn’t want to be a prick kicker. I wanted to accept Thomas S. Monson as the church’s new leader, but I didn’t know how to do it.

It helped when Elder Holland, unscripted and unplanned, spoke of the “mantle of the Prophet” falling on President Monson during these conference sessions. I hadn’t seen that happen, but Elder Holland clearly had, and somewhere in my soul, I knew he was telling the truth. I was able to open up a bit more, give up a piece of my pride and resentment, and allow the Spirit to tell me what I should have realized in the first place.

Then President Monson spoke at the end of the meeting.

We were sitting close enough to the teleprompter to see when the text was moving and when it was not. It was not moving for President Monson’s speech, at least for the first half of it. In that moment, he was not some animatronic wind-up toy; he was genuine, disarming, and free of guile. That's precisely when I realized he was exactly who the Lord would have leading His church. Everything was fine. It was a very simple thing, yet it’s hard to overstate how significant it was. People receive spiritual confirmations in different places and at different times. That was when I received mine.

Does that mean there was something wrong with me earlier? Maybe. It doesn’t matter, really. Nobody says I have to like his style or his clothing or the color of his hair. I just have to sustain and support him, and that’s something I now feel I can do wholeheartedly. As my uncle is fond of saying to ark-steadiers who worry about this or that in church leadership: “It’s the Lord’s name over the door; let Him worry about it.”

Today, this is who the Lord wants at the head of His church. I’m very grateful that He let me know that. It keeps me from worrying; it keeps me humble, and it reminds me who’s really in charge.