So, how did I get to this place where days flash by like light speed to Endor on Star Tours? Good question.
You could say that it started with stumbling upon a Facebook post that one of my former seminary teachers had liked regarding an event called "The Book of Mormon Translation Challenge" wherein those who participated would read the Book of Mormon in the time that it took Joseph Smith to translate after removing all the time he was unable to translate due to extenuating circumstances. You could say that it started with my aunt having the right connection to help me get my awesome job as a behavior therapist, which allowed me to escape the soul sucking pit of despair that was supervisory work at a call center. It maybe began with returning to the Single's Ward after a year of self-assigned sabbatical of teaching primary in the home ward. You could also say that this journey began the first time I started considering a mission and then pulled the option off the table, because even though everyone around me had well-intended opinions about the possibility, I couldn't hear myself think anymore. You could also say it started with a very specific statement in my patriarchal blessing regarding what my Heavenly Father desired I should do. There's a fair chance that it started the first time I echoed the Young Women's Party Line of "If I'm not married when I'm twenty-one, I would like to go on a mission" (full disclosure-I never imagined that I would be twenty-one and unmarried and consequently didn't really think a full time mission as a young adult would ever be something I had to make a decision about).
And in fact, all of those things would be right. They are all part of the tangled tapestry that in retrospect are tender mercies that have led me to this place, a place where I was supposed to end up all along, even if it wasn't written in the "brilliant" plan I had made for myself.
I'm twenty-three years old. I'll be honest, after I tabled serving a mission the first time, I was truly convinced that I must have misunderstood the seemingly linear and timeline-like statements in my patriarchal blessing regarding missionary work. I had an incredible job as a behavior therapist doing ABA Therapy with some of the sweetest tiny souls that have ever lived on Earth. I had gone back to school and had decided to overhaul my career path and become a writer, rather than doing the fiscally responsible thing and disregarding my dream. My life was incredible; however, I was also feeling a lot of nonspecific anxiety during my every day life. It was in this incredibly blessed and yet somehow still anxious state that I happened upon "The Book of Mormon Translation Challenge" and found myself intrigued by not only the pace, but the pseudo-competition I would be having with myself to read The Book of Mormon in 55 days.
So I started to read, and I started to mark, and I started to write in the margins and tape in longer commentaries. I'm was just minding my own business and reading 1 Nephi 1:20 when out of the blue I get this very distinct impression "you need to go on a mission, it's time".
To which I vocally responded, "Wait. What?" So I wrote #maybeamissionary in the margin and moved on. I told myself if I wrote that hashtag one hundred times, that would be a sign that I needed to go on a mission (sidebar-I also have at least three different places in this Book of Mormon with commentaries regarding the stupidity of demanding signs from God, but what can I say, I was being dumb).
I read daily. I wasn't anxious inexplicably anymore. I found a desire to be more obedient to commandments that I hadn't been giving my best efforts in. I developed a love for the scriptures and the people in them that transformed my reading from the competition I was having with myself, to time that I looked forward to each day. I continued feeling prompted to serve a mission and continued to hashtag those verses and keep a running tally in the back of the book. I would occasionally consider telling one of my family members or my best friends what big crazy thing I was considering, but never did-wanting to know for certain this time that I was all in before I said anything to anyone.
I finished early. I took Moroni's Challenge in Moroni 10:4-5 and my testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon was reconfirmed and strengthened. There were only 92 tally marks. I was disappointed and figured that I clearly must have forgotten to mark some. I went back and counted. I had missed one. That gave me a grand total of 93 times I had felt prompted to go on a mission.
The impression came to my mind very distinctly, "Sometimes you have to take things on faith".
And that was my answer. After reading The Book of Mormon and feeling so many times (for real, who needs 93 promptings to do something?) that serving a mission would be a blessing for those that I served and also bless me, that I would be safe and protected, that I might make a difference for someone, that the gospel is here to bring us a peace, comfort, and happiness the world cannot provide, I no longer felt like I "had" to go. Instead, I found that when I could quiet my fears and feelings of inadequacy, I wanted to go.
So, here I am. I report to the MTC on January 7, 2015 and will then spend my time serving in the Ohio Columbus Mission. I don't know that I have ever felt such a mix of excitement and apprehension and hope, but I know that this is exactly what my Father in Heaven wants me doing for the next 18 months of my life, and His plans are always better than mine.
