Every other year, on my husband’s birthday, we renew our temple recommends. The best thing about this is that we don’t have to do it every year like we used to. The change to bi-annual recommend interviews was an affirmation that God loved me and pitied me my ulcer.

I would rather be interrogated by Afghani war lords than answer the temple recommend questions, if for no other reason than I wouldn’t feel so guilty about all the lying.

It’s one thing to tell extremists that the launch codes are written in a diary I keep behind the water heater, and quite another to look my bishop in the eye and say that I’m honest in my dealings with my fellowmen.

I don’t set out to lie. Truly, I don’t. But if I were completely honest with everyone, I wouldn’t have a friend in the world. While I worry that I’ll be judged for the times I smile and say, “No! That haircut doesn’t make you look like a surprised dandelion,” I’m more concerned about having no one to sit with in the Terrestrial Kingdom cafeteria.

My mother’s cousin-who has reached the age where you can say anything and folks just assume you’re mixing your prescription medications-has said that if he were honest all the time, he’d spend every High Priests’ group meeting hollering, “Too bad you didn’t have time to prepare a lesson!”

And what about the Word of Wisdom question? I’m already hyperventilating over the honesty one and the one about the way I treat my family (“Does locking them in their bedroom with strict orders to keep shoveling until you strike floor’ count as misconduct?”), when BAM! Here comes the fitness test.

“No coffee, tea, alcohol, tobacco, or recreational pharmaceuticals,” I squeak out in a rush, even though the correct answer is, “Yes,” as in, “Yes, I keep the Word of Wisdom.”

But there I sit, a living monument to an all-pizza diet, knowing in my heart that the only time I run is when the Schwan’s truck skips my house, and I can’t help but feel like a fraud. I’m a writer and a music teacher, and I do both in the same room, from the same chair. There are days when you could remove my legs and use them as cricket bats and it wouldn’t affect my productivity in the least. Start tossing around words like “sparingly,” and I’ll likely tell you that I thought it referred to aerobics classes-another bald-faced lie, but by the time we’ve come this far in the interview I’m past the point of no return.

It starts out so well. Do I love God? Heavens, yes. Do I sustain the prophet and other leaders? Of course. Affiliate with apostates? Have I mentioned that I’m a writer? I hang out with the dog and the Schwan’s guy if I can catch him. So far neither of them have handed me any manifestos, although Sadie once made a noise like “Kampf” after she swallowed a bee.

But then it starts to come unraveled, and before I know it, the nonsense is flowing like lava. Do I keep my temple covenants? “Yes,” I say, without thinking too hard about what that really means. On a given day I’m anywhere between B+ and D- in my efforts to earn thrones, principalities, and kingdoms. Most of the time I can’t manage the few hundred square feet of aluminum siding that is my current dominion; telling me that someday I’ll have my own universe in which to lose the car keys isn’t always the good news it should be.

Do I owe money to an ex-spouse or dependent children? “No,” unless you count all the unpaid allowances and tooth fairy embezzlements my children have documented over the years.

Attend church regularly? “Yes,” even if I play “Mother’s Day Bingo” once I get there. (The Stripling Warriors story earned me a G’ this year.)

There’s always so much that remains unsaid in those interviews, things that I know wouldn’t change the outcome but that I still feel compelled to explain. How often has a frazzled bishop had to assure a neurotic sister like me that the time she blurted out a Biblical word upon being called to the Primary did not constitute a failure to support her local leaders?

Finally, when we’re in the home stretch, when I’ve told more lies than a roomful of car salesmen and just want to go home and break out the sackcloth and ashes, we get to the real kicker: Do you consider yourself worthy to enter the temple?

By now I don’t feel worthy to enter McDonalds, although that’s where I’m going next because it’s the closest source of ice cream and Diet Coke, two things I suddenly need very badly.

However, if I run that last question through my personal filter, it comes out sounding like this: “Despite your numerous shortcomings, as well as those of your family, neighbors, and fellow ward members, are you doing the best you can under the circumstances?”

That’s one I can answer honestly. “Absolutely,” I say. “Just line me up with the other sinners, and then promise us that trying to do something important and ennobling will cover a multitude of fibs.”

That earns me a recommend. Signed, sealed, and off the hook for another two years.

Whew.