It’s at times like this that I feel small. Not necessarily unloved or lonely, but
just small. Because out of all the people I would recognize as I walk across
campus, how many will miss me? How many
will even notice I’m gone?
It’s a bittersweet thought that my place in the hearts of
the people I’m leaving here probably won’t last too long or bleed too
profusely. They’ll probably be patched
up by someone new, someone who’s around to listen and to laugh and to cry,
while I’m off doing something utterly terrifying in a faraway land.
And it fills me to the brim with excitement and contentment,
because this is where I’m meant to be, right now, when my life was stagnant and
uninteresting.
But still it’s sad to think that place I have in at least a
handful of hearts is going to be taken up by someone else. I like to think that my departure is going to
be something like a non-competitive enzyme inhibitor; my leaving will change
the shape of the place I took in your heart, and no one else can fit back in
exactly the same way I did.
It’s good, I think, that those empty spots don’t stay empty.
That’s how humans are—we can’t leave
gaping holes or even little chinks missing from our hearts without finding
something to patch them with.
I want to tell you, anyone who’s really going to miss me
(and you know who you are) that I want you to be the happiest person you can be
for the next two years. Take
chances. Do scary things. Laugh a lot.
Smile even more. Cry. Never lose hope. Never feel like you have nothing to hold on
to. Remember that your Heavenly Father knows you. He knows exactly
where you should be and who you should be with and what you should be
doing. Grow as much as you can in as
many ways as you can.
Wow, this really feels like a huge dramatic final
goodbye. I didn’t mean for that to
happen.
I’ll still talk to you until March, guys. And then you can
write me letters! We won’t be completely out of touch.
But I know when I do get back, I’m going to be
different. First off, I’m going to have
a hard time remembering how to English, and I’m probably going to have a weird
lilting lisp. (According to my roommate’s
boyfriend, I’m going to sound like a gay man.) I’m going to think Europe is the best place in
the world (even more so than I do right now.)
I will be one of those
obnoxious RM’s who starts every sentence with “When I was on my mission…”
Chances are I will have shed more tears on the terrain of
Spain (see what I did there?) than I have in even the lovely Utah Valley, and I
will have felt more love from my Heavenly Father than I’ve even known was
possible. I will have known the
bitterest disappointment and the most poignant success. I’ll come back in tears because I just wanted to stay longer.
I’m going to have an immense
love for people none of you have ever met.
I’m going to know beyond anything I can comprehend right now that this
blessed gospel is true. I will have seen it change lives, and I will
have been utterly changed by it myself.
I hope you will be too, my dear friends who will be here in
Provo, or in Brazil or Pennsylvania or California or Portugal or Russia or
Jamaica or wherever you may be going. I
hope you find the courage to let the gospel change your heart, your life, yourself,
because I’ve felt the process start, and I know it can’t go wrong.
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