Today I had some extra time and started to unfriend people on Facebook who I hadn't talked to in awhile. The first person I went to u add turns out to have died last September. How very sad. He's someone I had gone out with like one time, we went running, per my request, because I was training for a race. I remember how happy he was afterward and said how good he felt to run and how he'd never run that far in his life. Anyway, it just makes me think how I would have never have known what happened to him, had it not been for social media. I probably wouldn't even have thought about him. It's weird to think about what happens to people. You meet someone and lose touch, they go on their way, and things happen to them and they feel things and they hurt and they're happy, and they even die, and you never know.

Lessons from a lost shirt

Don’t you hate it when something goes wrong after a perfect day? That’s just what happened on Saturdat after I was all high on life from going on a long run and a bike ride on the most beautiful sunny morning then helping kids be safe by checking their car seat installation at a car seat check point and then visiting one of my favorite people in the world for a few hours. Up to this point, perfect. But that’s when disaster struck. So after visiting my friend, I was on my way to meet my mom to go to Jane Eyre and I got sidetracked at Kohl’s because I wanted to return one thing and ended up trying on all these other things, (BTW I’m always getting sidetracked by SOMETHING, I swear, it’s so annoying, and hoping time will stop for me and seriously thinking in my mind that it will, then having anxiety when it inevitably doesn’t). So anyway, I was all late and told my mom just to meet me at a grocery store by the freeway so we wouldn’t be late. 

I took my clothes into Harmon’s to change since I was still wearing a shirt that said, “The following seat check has been reviewed for all audiences and has been rated safe for all passengers” which is a great shirt, very clever, designed like a movie rating, but I didn’t want to wear that shirt to the movie, naturally. Well as I went to change I got distracted by the candy  aisle and as I was hurriedly picking some out I noticed that my FAVORITE shirt was gone from my pile of stuff in my hand. When I say favorite, I mean favored among other shirts, prized, cherished, loved. In fact, I thought I’d lost it in the move and just TWO DAYS AGO found it at the back of my closet and got so freaking excited that I may or may not have kissed it. I view clothes as more than just a way to look cute or cool or whatever other purposes it can serve, but as a way to express yourself. I like clothes that are a little different, unique, funky. And this shirt was so amazing—pink with this purple neckline of pattern, in the shape of a necklace. Some people thought they were feathers, some thought it was a doily, others thought it was a necklace. I just thought it was my favorite shirt. And the sleeves very really unique and the cut of the bottom torso area was really cool. Amazing. It’s a shirt that’s irreplaceable. I got it at Uptown Cheapskates so there’s no knowing its history to go buy a new one. Here I had this high peak of happiness in finding it after it being considered lost and then it just went to a low sad state of sorrow to know it’s gone forever.

I hunted the one isle I had entered in Harmon’s back and forth, back and forth, like some kind of lunatic or hunter, either way, maybe they’re one in the same. I even asked them to make a page, “If anyone finds a pink blouse, please bring it to the lost and found” and left my phone number. What a sad sad day. I can’t figure out where it could have gone. The result--the loss of a favorite, irreplaceable piece of self-expression and the fact I had to wear my t-shirt with a movie rating theme to a movie theater. I was the girl that looked like she had dressed up for the movie by wearing her matching movie shirt. Next time I go bowling, why don’t I wear a shirt with a bowling lane on it, of if I go to a restaurant, I can wear a shirt with a kitchen on it, or if I go miniature golfing I’ll make sure to have a putting hole surrounded by a pirate obstacle course that you have to hit the ball in the pirate’s mouth, because why wouldn’t I want to match my outing. And I had an extremely hard time enjoying the movie because I kept worrying about my lost shirt, hoping and wondering if someone had turned it in, wondering where it could be and sad that it had all happened like it did.

This whole experience really got me thinking about how sometimes we can lose things that are important to us, the losing of which could have been totally prevented. In my case, poor planning and trying to fit too much into a short timespan was the cause of my shirt loss, since I was planning at changing at my parent’s house, not at a grocery store. So lame. But what we can lose can be a lot worse than a favorite shirt, as tragic as it was. We can lose people we love because of our selfishness or because of our bad habits or because of a million other reasons. We can lose jobs because of laziness or we can even lose our lives from negligence like driving with cell phones. There are so many things that we lose that don’t have to be lost if we just acted differently. And sometimes we lose what’s most important for what we want at the moment. Yeah I wanted to try on clothes, but I kinda even dislike Kohl’s and it wasn’t nearly as important or relevant to me as that favorite shirt. It’s never worth losing what we want the most for what we want at the moment, or even just from our own carelessness.

Il Bosco Sacro

After the initial difficulty of adjusting to a new space and situation and mourning my bank account, it definitely feels great to have a place of my own. I love my room and I love my little space, sparse though it may be. Yesterday, I was listening to Andrew Bird and putting my paintings and pictures up in my room and came to my Bosco Sacro (Sacred Grove) foldout poster from a Liahona magazine I got what seems like a million years ago. I got it shortly after I received my mission call to Italy and remember cherishing the flimsy foldout poster like it was the world's most prized possession. Just looking at the words, all in Italian, "Cio che e' successo qui ha cambiato il mondo: fa che cambi anche la tua vita" filled me with excitement, wonder and impatience for the adventure that lay ahead. I had no idea what the words meant, but at the same time they meant everything to me.

Looking at it now, it still holds the same treasure-like quality, but it's changed. Rather than the wonder and impatient anticipation that overwhelmed me every time I looked at it, it's filled with the most incredible and priceless memories of an experience that is truly too amazing to even describe. There is nothing better that I have ever experienced, or what I could imagine exceeding the experience of, than looking into the eyes of someone who understood, for the first time in their life, who they were--who they really were in an all-emcompassing perspective. Knowing that life is not just an arbitrary sequence on events, but that there's more to life than meets the eye. That as The Lord says in The Doctrine and Covenants 84:88, "For I will go before your face, I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts and mine angels rounds about you, to bear you up,"He is with us always and watches over us and helps us and loves us. And that's amazing. Knowing there is a plan for us, that we're not just roamers, getting by day-to-day just because we happen to be alive. It is truly incredible helping people understand that and see their lives become so much more meaningful and beautiful.

Not to mention what those kind of life changing experiences for others on my mission did for me. Never have I felt so close to everything good, to God, to love, to beauty, to truth. Never have I felt so sure of what was the right thing, of what I needed to do. That is truly an amazing feeling. And the Gospel is meant to teach you those things all the time, and it does, but there was something about treading on the foreign grounds of a country that will be forever engraved in my heart as a sacred and magical and heart-changing place, that augmented those feelings.

So I look at this poster, taped in places, with its plastic border that I put on, definitely not what would be deemed as a fancy piece of art, it fills my heart with all that it stood for before my mission and all that it stands for now, a symbol to me of what really matters in life. I imagine that the way my love for that picture has changed is somewhat compareable to what love is like in a good marriage. Having never been married, I really don't know, but I imagine that before the union, you can't wait to see what the much-anticipated and desired experience will be like. You don't want to continue going through life as before, but just want to be onto that next step, united with that which you love so much. During the marriage, that fairy-tale mind set wears off, but it's so much better in reality than what you could have even imagined, so much more fulfilling and incredible, with love entering your heart on a stronger scale than ever thought imaginable. Of course, the tough times are weightier than you ever imagined too, but once you look at that person, you see the treasure that has grown even more valuable with time--the challenges just an inevitable factor in the equation, but not the defining piece. And you look at that person, after all the time has passed since that initial anticipation to be with them, and you would never want to part with them, no matter how frayed or simple they may be, or even how different than you expected. Because that person that you now understand so perfectly but perhaps could only have attempted to decipher before, is absolutely incredible and has helped mold you into who you are today.

"What happened here [in the sacred grove] changed the world: let it change your life." That is what the poster translates to and that is exactly what happened to so many people who I love so much. And what happened to me. It's truly incredible that God gives us these gifts in life that mean everything. Life really is so amazing and we have so much to be grateful for.