perspective

i was late to sacrament meeting on sunday so i decided to sit in the foyer and clean out the messenger bag i used for church while i listened to the talks. i love it when i can multitask like that at church. i am sure someone has cleaned out their purse in the chapel, but i wouldnt do it. seems irreverent and a little tacky, but thats just me. i am not calling anyone to repentance. believe me.
there are 4 wards that use our building, so listening to the talks became difficult as the previous wards third hour came to a close and people were gathering their families to go home. it got impossible when the relief society president came out with her screaming two year old and two additional women came out to deal with their misbehaving kids.

all of these women are my friends, so we started chatting. as we bemoaned the unfortunate decline of the "spare the rod, spoil the child" philosophy we noticed the elders walking down the hall. one of the women commented on how cute they were, but followed up with how young they look. we all kind of giggled, but it opened up a discussion on how your perspective changes on something that is essentially unchanging. for the most part, missionaries are 19-21 and thats how its been for decades, but how those young men are viewed drastically changes over time.

when i was a young girl, having the missionaries over for dinner was a blast. they were the best playmates ever. they ate like they had two hollow legs and would just rough house(way before the more recent guidelines that prohibit such things)and act goofy until they had to go home and make curfew. once you graduate from primary into young women these elders morph into demigod like status. they are so cute and so funny and so cool and you just cant wait until you can date and marry your own rm. beehive, mia maid(you can date!), then laurel, when dating a returned missionary can be a reality. now they are potential husbands so you are sizing them up as breeding stock and providers. this phase will last for a few months to a few years. maybe you go to byu for your mrs degree, maybe you meet your eternal companion at fhe in your singles ward. there are so many ways it can happen, but it usually ends with your standing in a receiving line and your closest friends and family eating those chalky pastel mints and drinking ice water out of a punch bowl. then, if you have a real testimony, you give birth to your own little missionary nine months later. the perspective shifts to raising the next generation of missionaries.

now? perspective is a funny thing. the girls from my laurel class are sending out their sons on missions. one just welcomed hers back. technically, i am old enough to be the mother of a returned missionary, yet i shamelessly flirt with them via my blog. in my defense, jake started it, but...

big mistake

when jake copied and posted andreas letter, it got me to thinking(i swear, i dont have an original thought, i just freakin copy everyone else.)about the letters i have stashed away. there was time that i would tuck the letters i received in my journal. this habit started around the time i was dating erm(electrical engineer rm). he wrote me a lot. i was 19 and he was 25. i was mature for my age, but i wasnt ready for him. i wanted to post some of his letters to be funny, but in going through them, they are breaking my heart. time really can fade memories, but i am wondering why i broke up with him. my journal gives some clues, but from my current point of view, i was an IDIOT. he used to send me lyrics to songs for me to figure out. he told me they all had meaning. the following video is one of the songs he sent.




there is more, but i dont know how much more i want to write. he offered everything i wanted. everything i still want and have not obtained. i dont think i was in love with him and my 19 year old heart couldnt bear the thought of that. now? i married a man i loved and looked what happened. arranged marriage doesnt sound like such a crazy idea to me at this point. what started out as a fun trip down memory lane is turning into major regret. it was a big mistake.

invisible touch

i am sure i am not alone when i say that music can really throw you back in time. i was listening to pandora when this song came on. i gave it a thumbs up and then went to youtube to listen to it again. i love this song. never really cared for genesis until mr electrical engineer returned missionary(the 2nd of only 2 rm's i ever dated) included this song on one of the mixed tapes(it was the 80's! mixed tapes were COOL)he made for me. i am sure if really thought about it i could come up with other songs that were on some of those tapes, but this one sticks out. he made a point of telling me when he gave me the first tape that every song had a meaning and he didnt include anything without a purpose. he was 26 and i was 18 and i am sure some of his meaning was lost on me, but not this song. i drove him crazy, but he loved me. i wish i loved him back. he was good to me and would have been a good husband and father. why doesnt the heart obey? i will explain more about eerm in a future post. there was some pretty good stuff there.

single and mormon

you really might as well have 2 heads. even though the single poplulation within the mormon church has grown considerably, the ability to deal successfully with said population is some what behind.it was even worse a little over 10 years ago when i divorced my "non-member" husband. when i started going back to church regularly, most wanted to chalk my divorce up to the simple fact i had married a "non member". if i had listened more closely to the spirit, i would have been guided to marry a wonderful returned missionary and been on my way to eternal happiness. WHATEVER.