Wednesday, August 31, 2011

goodbye home, hello future

The past two weeks have been full of goodbyes. My change of mind from staying in Provo for the next six months to moving happened so suddenly, there was a lot of scrambling to do to say goodbye to the people and places I have loved for five years. Among the things I had to say goodbye to was my truck. It was a hard thing to do, but I sold it to a new college student from Indiana who was very grateful to receive it. That makes me happy. If I had to get rid of it, at least it went to someone who is going to appreciate it as much as I did.


Goodbye Truck. Thanks for being an awesome first auto. I will miss you.

Other goodbyes were even harder: Friends I have who just returned home from missions and with whom I would LOVE to spend HOURS catching up with got only a quick "hi, bye," and some only a facebook message. Still sad about that, but we'll all see each other again someday eh?



As a "last hurrah" type of thing, some friends and I hiked Mt. Timpanogos on the eve of my departure. I love that mountain. I love the Timponooke trail. A great way to end my life in the valley, in the shadow of the larger-than-life mountains.

Beautiful, no?

Over the course of ten days, I said goodbye to household items that have sustained me for my time at college, food storage I've been working on building since 2006 (can't pay for THAT to fly to Hawaii), BYU campus, Provo city traffic with an influx of 20,000 for the new semester (not a hard parting), and finally, probably the hardest goodbye of all, the view of Provo itself.

Since I moved there exactly five years ago, Provo really has become my home. Up until that point, I hadn't lived in any one city longer than six months, since I was thirteen years old. Since I've been in school, even, with so much traveling and moving and changing, I've gotten used to saying goodbye to other places, but Provo was always a constant to fall back on--as soon as the summer or the semester or the trip was over, I would return. Every homecoming brought back the now-familiar customs of the bubble--from how people dress and talk to the way the traffic light works at the intersection of University and 800 N. Leaving on Monday, however, ended that option for me. I will probably never return to live in Provo, the familiarity and comfort of that part of my life has changed, and all over again, I feel like I'm leaving home.

Before I get too teary-eyed thinking about what is behind me, I have to remind myself what is ahead. I am twenty-two (soon to be twenty-three) years old. I have been blessed with an education, ambition, and heaps and heaps of resources to make my dreams possible. I do not know what is going to come in the next year, or even the next three months, but like Robert Browning, I believe that the best is ALWAYS yet to be. Always, because the Lord has a plan for our lives and it builds off the glories of the past and present. This is a blog about rejoicing, and I've realized that I haven't mentioned that for awhile. But truly, we have great reason to rejoice because of the knowledge that our lives are in the hands of the most loving, creative, imaginative Being in the universe, who has the righteous desires of OUR hearts even nearer to HIS than we do. I am so excited. Life is, and is going to be, great.

"GROW old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in his hand
Who saith, ``A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!'' 
-"Rabbi Ben Ezra" Robert Browning

So goodbye Provo. Goodbye Utah. Goodbye good friends and coworkers and teachers and mentors and mountains and memories. I will miss you. But hello dear Zukunft. I've been waiting for you.  
 

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