Mr. President

We saw a friend who has been deployed for the last year today. I asked him something, and he responded, "Oh yeah, President Merrill said...." I was so surprised, my brain was like, "Who are you talking about?" I mean, I didn't even know he knew yet that President Merrill was a president :)

We use titles of respect in the church. Everyone at church is "Brother Jones" or "Sister Jones". If a person is a president of a class, quorum, or branch, then they become "President Jones." A bishop is always "Bishop Jones."

Marriner has been "President Merrill" before - but never to me. He was the president of the Elders' Quorum, which is the adult men. Then he was the president of the young men. And all the men called him President, but I wasn't ever really a part of it.

As I'm sure many of you have experienced, transitioning to using formal titles was a process for me, anyway. Being called Sister Turner when I joined Relief Society about killed me - that was my mom!! When I went on a mission, everyone called me Sister Turner. It was weird to me. But I really came to love my title, complete with accent: "Sees-ter (or, just plain Ter) Toor-ner" To my friends from the Philippines, I'm still "Ter".

The really hard one was when I got married, and suddenly had the same name as my mother-in-law, who had been a bit of a mentor for years, but she was still as old as my mother. Marriner enjoys formality more than I do, he didn't have any problem being Brother Merrill. But I never called him that.

After we moved to Indiana, but still didn't have kids, we taught the 6 and 7-yr olds in Primary together. Really, that was a great time together, even though we didn't really know what we were doing. In fact, that's probably what made it so great. And that was where we transformed from Marriner and Christine to Brother and Sister Merrill, dynamic-duo-not-to-be-outsmarted-by-little-kids! Brother and Sister Merrill were such a great team that sometimes, we'd stay as Brother and Sister Merrill long after Primary had ended. You know, at home eating dinner and asking, "Brother Merrill, can you pass me the milk?" (Which is a funny example, because our table was so small, you could reach anything without needing it passed...those were the days, my friends!) I think we got so into being Brother and Sister Merrill, our kids are lucky we didn't just tell them to call us that instead of Dad and Mom... It was a great time of working and serving together, maturing and learning, and preparing us to not flunk at parenthood.

So I know that to the world, my husband's name is President Merrill right now, but to me, he is and always will be my one and only Brother Merrill, my best teammate and partner in service.