Oh life. To be honest, I have a really good life. But sometimes I think reading other people’s blogs and catching up with people on Facebook gets me down. Maybe if the things I left behind would just stay behind, I could be happier right now. Maybe without all the pictures and records I could have just faint memories to make me happy, and then of course the people who are still in my life to share things with now. Things that we share NOW.
But no. This weekend will be the Scranton reunion. Class of ’05. Interestingly enough, although I started out at Scranton in ’01, I didn’t graduate in ’05, and I didn’t graduate from Scranton. I graduated in ’08 from BYU, a world away. My junior year in college brought a lot of changes. I hadn’t concerned myself with who I was for about three years. I basically immersed myself in a new group of people, a new culture, a new place- with good and bad results. About three years into it I was happy with what I had become. I found friends that I love with my whole heart to this day. I learned how to be a good friend to them. (Still learning.) I figured a lot of stuff out about education and the direction I wanted my life to go, and I wasted a lot of time doing nothing. Being 18, 19, 20, 21. It was glorious. But then I realized that with this new self that had developed, someone more confident and happy and more educated- that I needed to add back in some of the things that made me who I was before. And that meant God. Now Scranton was a Jesuit University, which meant that we talked about God a LOT. Theology was part of the curriculum. There were statues of Saints on the campus and every afternoon the bells on one of the dormitories rang out in hymns. (3pm?) And I will always, always love the Catholic faith. I don’t know if it is nostalgia or appreciation or just the truth and friends I found there, but I love it. And I always will. But during that time I had forgotten what it meant to be a Latter Day Saint. I had gotten really relaxed about my specific religion, and I thought that I needed to figure out whether I believed it for myself once and for all. Long story short, I figured out that I did. I really, really did believe in the LDS faith, and when I figured that out I realized that I needed to do something about it.
So I went on a mission.
I remember a lot of my friends and professors asking me, “Why now? Why not wait a year and graduate and go then?” And I had no answer except “God can see my life from beginning to end. If he thinks it should be now, who am I to question?” And I knew that I was supposed to go. And it ripped my heart out. And with every graduation picture I see, or reunion that I don’t get an invite to (people who take a leave-of-absence and never come back aren’t on the list) it STILL hurts. But even now when I ask myself that question, “Why now?” I see faces in my mind. People in England, where I went, families that were hurting that the Gospel put back together. Maybe any missionary could have done it, maybe anyone with our message could have offered those people what they were looking for. But I was there. I did it. And I’m amazingly grateful for those pictures in my mind, the faces of people who taught me what Christian service was.
And then BYU. I finished my degree, planted my shallow roots in an area just long enough to find John. Possibly the only person in this entire world to be as loving and as patient and as perfect for me as I need him to be. And then there was my Camper. Our baby that we were going to wait until we were financially ready for, our child that we were going to wait to have, which we didn’t…end up waiting for…And I wouldn’t have it any other way. And we struggle. Every day we struggle to provide for ourselves, to use what little time and energy we have to build a life for our little family, and we love each other. And we get to live with my parents, who are devoted, life-long parents. People who relish the nearness of their grandson and their children. And through all of this I’ve learned what family means, and how amazing it is to have people to count on. People who make life better, who bear each other’s burdens.
And even still, this weekend, that life I gave up beckons me. It calls and makes me wish I could have had BOTH lives. The one I have now filled with people, and the one I left behind with graduation hats and tassels and me finishing a PhD right now and becoming the academic I always wanted to be. But I can’t have both, and I’m glad that out of the two, I have the one filled with love and people with arms to hug me a little hand reaching out to me to help him go down a slide. I just wish, I guess, that I got an invitation. That I could go and show my friends from then who I am now, introduce them to John and Camper and catch up. I wish that in giving up that last year that I could still belong to that group of people. That would be nice. Even though I would be welcomed, if I could afford to go, people would want to see me again. Still, it would be nice to get an invitation.
While I was on mission a woman gave a talk and asked us to think of sacrifice less as sacrifice, as more as consecration. We weren’t giving things up for the Lord, we were giving things TO him. And we were asked, that day as well, “Do you really think that what you’re giving up in any way compares to what He has to give you?” So I cling to that. To think that I’m already so blessed, and that what I gave up will seem small. This heartache I feel is nothing compared to what I’ve been spared NOT following the way that I know I should go. It’s the hardest part about not being two travelers. Not even one and a half. Just me, and I am where I am. And it’s a good place to be.
