when T I M E touches E T E R N I T Y

With the semester coming to a close a lot has been on my mind, and I mean a LOT. Sometimes I feel as if my brain, which is always analyzing something, has a brain which has a brain, doing the same thing. However there seems to a constant draw to H O M E.

I will be returning back to home from school in just under a week. Returning home isn't something that is unfamiliar. In fact, I always get really excited I think about the journey home.There's just something special about crossing the Colorado River into the valley that makes my heart particularly happy. This time when I return home it will be unlike any other. 

I am not returning to the same jobs I had while in high school but instead starting a new one. One that will challenge me in ways I've never been challenged before. One that will cause me to change, quite a bit. I won't be living with my parents. I won't be surrounded by those with whom I grew up with. I am returning home to start a new chapter. I couldn't be more excited! (like a little kid on Christmas morning excited. Times ten) Even with this excitement, I still find myself a bit saddened by the reality that this new beginning will come only after an ending. 

Not an ending with school, I still have a ways to go with that. But an ending in the time spent with those I have found myself to be surrounded by. Six darling girls whom I love nearly as much as my sisters. Fun neighbors with whom pranks and random one am couch conversations are held. This place that I call my home, away from home. I think the thing that is the hardest to accept is that those six girls and I won't be seeing each other everyday, and that we won't be in a situation where we will, again. Yes, we will forever be friends and when I look back and recall my junior year of college, I'll do it with a huge grin on my face because they truly are the type of people I want to tell my kids about.

But next year will be different. One will be in Russia serving a mission. Two will be living with separate friends. Three of them will be my roommates next year, but with senior year comes a lot of work and not so much play.

In short, I find myself wishing for more T I M E. 

But don't we all? More time with those we love, especially when the next time we'll be together with those is unknown. More time in the day to play in the sunshine. More time at night for crazy adventures and maybe even an extra hour or two of sleep. One more time to hear the voice of one who as passed, or even just one more time to be wrapped up in their embrace only to whisper to them those three words one last time.

Some days are the type that makes I wish time would go faster so that a new one can begin. Some days I would give anything to freeze time because the events of that day were nothing short of perfect. Sometimes I find myself wishing I could rewind time to when things were simpler. When the only big decision I had to make was what adventure I was going to have in the cardboard box dad would bring home from work. Or to fast forward through time. Past all the all night cram sessions and dumb dating games to the time when I am happily married and teaching US History to some adolescent, unaware of just how fast time goes by. Nevertheless I've come to know that no matter how many wishes are made, time is beyond our control and endings are inevitable.

One afternoon, all caught up in my thoughts, I jumped in Mia (my car), and went on a drive. I found myself at one of my favorite parks in the Cache Valley. It's on the north side and overlooks almost the whole valley. Letting my mind wander through the chaos, a quote from a book I had read last summer ran through my thoughts. It's from, Neil A. Maxwell's, "All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience." 

" T I M E  is clearly not our natural dimension. Thus it is that we are never really at  H O M E  in time. Alternately, we find ourselves wishing to hasten the passage of time or to hold back the dawn. We can do neither, of course, but whereas the fish is at home in the water, we are clearly not at home in time-because we belong to something of  E T E R N I T Y. Time, as much as any one thing, whispers to us that we are strangers here."

So finally, all started to come together to make sense. Perfect sense. Because we are strangers in time,  visitors in mortality, eternal beings, the longing of something more; more time, more understanding, more peace, is only human nature. However, we are more than human. We are sons and daughters of a loving Heavenly Father. We have the best older brother. One who sacrificed everything, literally, everything. Why? Because he loves us that much and sooo much more. To provide the opportunity to return home, after our time is over, when we have achieved eternity.

H O M E - T I M E - E T E R N I T  Y

Everything seems to align when we step back, gain greater understanding and perspective, and trust Him. Trust. I think that's where I struggle the most. Trusting that letting go and moving on will lead to better things. That allowing an ending will bring an even great beginning. So in order to truly trust. To return home, back to our Heavenly Father. To gain that eternal glory. We must first get to know H I M. 

Because really getting to know Him allows
 T I M E to touch E T E R N I T Y . 

 If there is anything I've learned in the whole twenty one years I've spent on this side of the veil, it is that things will never go the way I planned them. Even when I do all in my power to formulate things in my favor. Or use every ounce of my free agency to swing things my way. Even then, there always seems to be something unforeseen, at least to me. "God has foreseen what we will do and has taken our decision into account (in composite with all others), so that his purposes are not frustrated" (Maxwell).
So now at the close of another school year and the start of a new summer. Which to most people is not a big deal at all, but summers are huge to me (I feel like I learn the most about myself during them). Now is the time to accept this end as a new beginning to get to know Him better. To set new goals. To create new relationships and strengthen existing ones. But most importantly to live so that when time falls into eternity, I will be able to return home.