Mi corazón está abierto.

So, as I'm sure most of you know by now, I went on a mission trip to Mexico a couple of weeks ago, and I've been trying to blog about it for awhile, but I think even now, I am still trying to sift through all of the feelings and thoughts and new ideas growing within me and around me and changing me on a daily basis because of it. But I have to start somewhere.


When we went, I had so many apprehensions. I hadn't taken Spanish in a few years, and I was worried about trying to talk to the kids and about if something happened, how I would begin to explain what I needed to with the minimal Spanish that I felt I would be able to remember. I wasn't ready to leave home, and I wasn't really ready to be back at UD either, but amidst those feelings was this feeling of going to basically a different world an trying to figure out who I was there and what God had planned for me there. It was like a totally different realm that I was entering into: like a weird Narnia that I was finding somewhere in the air between Dayton and San Diego where we touched down.

And it did kind of become like a weird sort of Narnia for me.

I have never been out of the country to do service before; it is often said that the service that people do in other countries is more beneficial for those doing the service than it is for those you are serving. And while I can't say what we did meant to the orphanage we stayed at meant anything for them, but I know it touched and changed each of the six of us from UD that went on this trip.


When we first arrived, it seemed as if there was a definitive gap between us and the people. Even while we had Flower with us, we were nervous to try to talk in our awful Spanish to the kids, and they weren't entirely sure what to think of us, either. We slowly began to talk to them, but the first day or two was a lot of smiling and attempting to communicate things simply with how we were carrying ourselves in the situation. We began to understand that all those kids really needed from us was to be loved.

And while we were there from Sunday to Sunday, we did a lot of stuff. We painted at a women's shelter connected to the orphanage and it was no small undertaking. We went across the border a few times and got various things and brought them back with us. We painted at the orphanage we were staying at, and at the sister orphanage in the countryside. We did yardwork in the sun, and we sorted mountains upon mountains of donated clothes for hours upon end.

But while we did all of those things, that was not what made the week as wonderfully alive and full of God as it was. It was the time that we spent with the kids. The orphanage we were staying at housed about 20 teen orphans, and we spent every night of the week that we were there just hanging out with the kids. Teaching them American games, trying to let them teach us Mexican games, playing basketball, laughing with them, dancing with them, learning their stories, and being loved by them.



We spent three of our mornings and afternoons at the other orphanage in the countryside as well, and there were 30-50 kids under the age of 15 staying at that orphanage. When we were there, the kids wanted nothing more than just to play with us and be around us, and let us pick them up and carry them around and give them the attention that they deserve as children. It was exhausting being so active and trying so hard to communicate with these kids all week when I did not even speak their language. But I have never felt more full and alive than I did when I was spending time with those orphans. These kids have faced so many hard times, and many of them have lost parents or siblings, and some of them even have parents who can no longer care for them. But many of these orphans are just that, while they are being cared for at the orphanage that is becoming their home and their family, they will never be able to be adopted for various reasons, and that nearly broke my heart in half.

Basically, I learned more in my week in Mexico than I ever expected to be able to learn in one week. While I was there, I received so much love from those orphans, and even though I think that I love a lot in my life, these kids taught me what pure genuine Godly love is like to receive, and all I could do was love them back as much as I could. While I was there, I saw God more than I have ever seen Him before, and that amazed me because He is already so present and abounding in my life, I did not expect to go somewhere and see Him even more than I already do. But He started moving in a new way in my life and in my heart, and I feel like more than anything I am affirmed in the fact that I just want to live my life totally for Him.

Along with that, I am now back here trying to find a purpose in the purposelessness of college. Now don't get me wrong, I love so much about Dayton. Being here doing the amazing things that I get to do and getting to love all of the amazing people in my life here is totally worthwhile. But the thing is, being in Mexico with those kids and spending the whole week with God showed me that there is such a greater purpose in life for me. Doing that felt like so much more than being here and doing homework and participating in activities that feel kind of purposeless. But I know that all of these things have purpose in forming and shaping me into the person that will be ready for an even greater purpose once college is ready to be rid of me. I am searching for God's purpose in me in all of this purposelessness wonderful that is UD and college and right now.

There was an American intern/missionary that is there for a year with the kids, staying at the orphanage and spending time with them and just loving on them. She said several things during the week that really resounded with me. One of these things is that we grow comfortable in our faiths. Particularly in college, we find ourselves in a position where we are like Jesus' disciples. We are all together in a comfortable environment having God's love poured into us and never wanting to be away from that. We are His disciples, we are His vessels. But eventually, there comes a time when we must separate to different places and use the love that God has poured into us and be disciples to the world, pouring that love God gave us into them. And even though we may no longer be comfortable, we are living. In Mexico, I felt uncomfortable, but I knew that God's love was with me in a new way, and getting to share the love that has been poured into me was truly a beautiful experience. I am striving to live my life as one of Jesus' disciples.

The other thing she said that became kind of a joke for us throughout the week was when she asked one of the teens a question. In Spanish, the word for sister and the word for beautiful are very similar. Sister is hermana and beautiful is hermosa. She tried to ask one of the girls where her sister was, but instead said, "Donde esta su hermosa?" Where is your beautiful?
While this was a huge joke between our group and her the entire week, thinking back to my trip and where I am at now, I find myself asking that kind of question a lot more.
Where is your beautiful? Where is your greatest love being placed, and your greatest passion, and all that God has given you to be?

Basically, going to Mexico has made my heart open. God is moving in my life in a totally new way, and I also cannot get those kids and their faces and their stories and their LOVE for me and life itself out of my heart and my mind. I have stopped wanting things to be good, and rather, I just want to be alive. We miss so much if we only are experiencing the "good" things that are given to us. Through the pain and the sorrow and the change and movement of everything we can find peace and joy and love and a sense of life that is new and wonderful.

I am in a new search for my "beautiful."

Lessons, Love, and Light

It's been about a month since I've tried to express my emotions via blog. The past month has been a crazy ride and I can't even begin to express how much I have loved every second of it. And as I'm sitting at work right now listening to a CD that an awesome friend made for me and dancing a little bit, life just feels like it fits right now! So what better time to blog?

[Insert cliched statement about not knowing where to even start.] I guess the biggest thing that happened in the past month was Lighthouse. And man, it was really not just a thing, it was a beautiful wonderful absolutely glorious gift from God! Trying to explain lighthouse in any amount of words just won't do. I even wrote a song, and it doesn't begin to express how awesome of an experience I thought it was.

"We didn't know we'd need a light, we didn't know that love would be our light."
Lighthouse just has a way of literally being just what I need whenever I need it. When I need to see God in my life, the lighthousers just come to me and I can see God in each and every one of their faces. When I feel sad and don't feel like anything is going to get any better, Lighthouse has a way of shining its light into all of the dark places in my life and giving me an inexplicable and impenetrable hope. The community that we built isn't something that is normal; we email each other to ask for prayers or share stupid stories, we laugh about things that probably wouldn't be funny to anyone else, we hug and use tunnel talk probably a little too much (what can I say, I definitely don't hate it!), and we just love a lot bigger than I think society is typically used to. Lighthouse has this way of being much more than any individual involved in it ever set out to make it. Together, each of us is so much already, but as a large unit, we are so much more than I could ever express. I look forward to the continuing effects that Lighthouse will have on my life and the lives of all of my friends that I made on Lighthouse. I look forward to the effects it will have on all of my friends that I convince to go on the retreat in the future, and I look forward to the stream of love that will continue to flow probably forever.
"We had each other, that was enough. We'd have each other now when storms get rough."

Along with that, I have been finding more purpose and value for my life. Not to continually talk about Lighthouse, but during a few of the talks, there were parts where those talking shared about people they had lost who were close to them. And, sitting there, I realized that it was an absolute crime how poorly I value myself. Not just because I deserve a lot of credit and love for exactly who I am, but because I make a difference to peoples' lives!
"cause in the end we have each other, and that's at least one thing worth living for"
People deserve to have me in their lives because I have something unique to offer to every single person I come in contact with. And I deserve to love and be loved back because God made me just the way I was meant to be. And everything that I have been struggling with and going through is just a testament to how beautiful life really is. The more you feel, whether they are good feelings or bad feelings, it just means that you are that much more alive. And nothing could be more beautiful than our lives through Christ.

So, since Lighthouse was so long ago but still so large in my mind, it seems kind of unbelieveable that other things actually happened between now and then. I have been busy as ever. This is the first week SINCE lighthouse that I have not had a huge assignment (or two, or three, or seven) of some sort due. School has been biting at my ankles, and for the first like, 2 weeks or so after lighthouse, I almost went crazy. If I had not had the constant emails and support from my new lighthousers, I fear that I might've gone insane in those weeks. I had one week in particular that I almost reverted back to how I had felt this summer, and if you know anything about that, you know that would NOT be a good thing. But, from a few life-chats with two of my best friends with twin names, I powered through that awful week.

"God gave me you for the ups and downs. God gave me you for the days of doubt."
I guess this just brings me to one of my next points. I could not be more thankful for my friends. I have grown closer to a person this semester that I literally feel like is my soul sister, and she has reminded me that the love that I have to give to people is abounding and unique and makes every day worthwhile. When I'm with her, it feels like my chest is going to burst apart from all of the love that is overflowing from my heart. It's kind of excessively beautiful.

And through all of these things, largely dark, the light has been shining. Whether this light comes in the form of swearing with an irish friend in the galley, watching SNL with some freshmen that I love in my common room, stopping by the VWK desk to visit and the person I'm visiting chokes on their spit because they're so excited to see me, hanging out with some campus south girls and watching proposal videos, having dinner dates with exceptional people, playing the songs I've written for people who really want to hear them, laughing until I cry with my roommates, wearing glittens for the sole purpose of hand-holding, getting a LH email that makes me smile so big that I can't stop for at least a good 20 minutes, hugs that feel like they're going to crack my ribs but they do crack my sadness in half, or just the light that I see from the joy and absolute love that has been surrounding me.

I guess the thing that is most important to me is, I don't really feel like my life will ever be as dark again. And even when it might be, I will have hope for the light to come. Because it's never that the light goes away, but rather, that I've just been choosing not to see it.
"I'm not living without hope, you can't tell me that I'm wrong, traded places with the person that I thought I was before. You can't tell me that I'm wrong, just as long as I survive,
It's a good day to be alive."

And for some reason,
I think it will be impossible not to see that light from now on.

What's been missing?

Today, I woke up, and the second fluorescent light in our suite had given up turning on. Needless to say, it's been a little dark in our room. But somehow, the light in our lives has been making it hard to notice.

The leaves have been changing and fall is upon us and quickly passing into the late autumn that resembles that winter season we all love and dread all the same. My walk down from Stuart hill every day is going to get more daunting, and I might start getting a little bitter about it. However, I'm going to try to appreciate the weather and our beautiful campus in every season that it has to offer. Try to bring me down Ohio! I dare you! With your random sporadic switches from day to day of warm and cold and winds that can knock me down..maybe I'm actually loving it. Just have to keep telling myself that.

I blogged a little bit over a month ago, and I don't feel like that blog had any significance. It said a lot of nothing. And now I find that's odd, because so much not nothing has been surrounding me. My life has been so incredibly full with beautiful and wonderful things and I have been so obsessed with all of it. Yet, there has been something lacking from my life and I wasn't totally sure what it had been. I've been wandering around (rather, running) from event to event and class to class in my life and I'm doing so much but there is something that is still missing. And up until the last weekish, I hadn't been able to really pinpoint what it was.

Does life ever just smack you in the head? In the past week, I feel like life has been smacking the back of my head every single day. The beginning of this past week, I decided that I should read my blog from the end of the school year last year. I hadn't read it in a really long time, and a lot in myself and my life had changed since 5.5 months ago when I wrote it. Here is a quote I could not stop reading over and over when I read back through this.

"I learned that love is reckless and all-encompassing. It is painful and wonderful and hurts and heals us. It is something that cannot be put into words when it is being felt, and something that we have endlessly to give, if we remember that the most important love is that for your Savior and that for yourself, because if we have these loves, then we can give and receive all the other kinds of loves in a more righteous and beautiful way."

Love. That is such a huge part of my life here at Dayton, and it's not that that is the part of my life that has been missing..but I have been missing the acknowledgment of that love. Not only of the love that others have been giving me, but the love that my Savior has been giving me, and the love that I have been denying for myself.

And this week, life has really been whopping me upside the head with it. There is so much love in all of the people all around me. I am overwhelmed with the love that my friends have to offer me constantly and consistently. While I struggle with my own issues on a regular basis, my friends have endless love to offer to me and I have been so amazed by it. And every time I have spent time with one of them (really any of them) this week, I have been struck with a dopey smile on my face because I am literally mind-blown at how much they love me..and how much I reciprocate that love. Sometimes I feel like my heart might burst apart from all of the love that is coming in and going out of it.

And then there's the new people that have been coming into my life the past few months, and then even more recently. It is when I meet these new people that I realize once again how passionate I am about people. I love meeting new people and knowing that I love them before I even know them--and yes that sounds creepy but if you know me, then I think it kind of makes sense. I love when I meet new people and I know that they're going to be important to me just by them being themselves. They give me hope to continue to whatever it is that tomorrow is going to bring, and I get so excited for getting to know them that it's hard for me not to hug attack them and tell them how pumped I am that they are in my life.

And then the experiences. All of the experiences that my life has been offering me have been so packed full of love and I have been so wrapped up with my own thoughts in my own head to really take in the full view of them. I have been joining group after group, and partaking in event after event that literally fills my heart to the point of bursting: but in the most beautiful way. I have been so incredibly blessed here, and I can't even begin to explain how this hit me this week. Sitting in my PORCH group, listening to people talking about the goods and bads of their weeks, I felt overwhelmed by how great they are and I don't even know them yet. Sitting in my classes, I felt overwhelmed with the beautiful view out the window, and all the smart people surrounding me in class. Sitting in IHOP or in mass, I felt overwhelmed by how lucky I am that I get to praise God openly at this wonderful school with so many of these other people desiring to do just that: praise God alongside of me. Sitting in a Phi Lambs meeting, I felt overwhelmed by the amazing people surrounding me that have truly felt like home to me this year. Sitting in the chapel playing the piano for a prayer service for a women I had literally just met, I felt overwhelmed by how thankful I am that I get so many opportunities to share of myself with so many people here. Sitting around a circle introducing myself as a sophomore, I felt overwhelmed by the fact that so much amazing change and so many amazing blessings have sprinkled my life in only a little over a year here. Sitting in my common room lit by white Christmas lights surrounded by people that I rarely get to see and laughing until I cry, I felt overwhelmed by how beautiful my life is. Seriously overwhelmed. Seriously so beautiful.

In these acknowledgments of love, I am hoping to strive towards living more fully in my Savior, and learning more each day to learn to love myself. So, because of all of this beauty and overwhelming, I have realized that acknowledging this love in my life makes all the difference.


God is love. Love is everywhere. I can be love. And I am loved.

No Eloquence, just Headspace.

Nothing I could possibly say would express how I am feeling.

I am going to write these snippets of thoughts I'm having that are generally directed at some people without using their names, and it might not seem like a very coherent blog post, but it will be the best way for me to get past the muddled thoughts I'm having and maybe be able to do my homework:

1. I'm supposed to be able to adjust faster than this. I wish I wasn't so incredibly bad at transitioning. Obviously, being back here now is easier than it ever was when I was a freshman. It's easier in some ways, but I'm a totally different person now. I can't just expect that all of this will be super easy just because it's my second year. However, maybe that's my problem. I am expecting it to be. I should only expect it to be something different..and that doesn't mean easy.
It just means different.

2. I can't believe how old you are. Obviously, if you're reading this, I may or may not be talking about you, but I don't feel like specifying this. Two of my best friends, specifically, are old. They're still the same age in relation to me that they always were, but they're upperclassmen in high school and they're doing big things with their lives. They're doing all the big things that I did when we were becoming friends, and it's so weird to think about how old you are, and feel like I've missed so much of it. But, I guess that doesn't matter all that much. I just can't stop thinking about all of the amazing things you're going to do the even older that you both get. It blows my mind.

3. I miss you. I don't want to miss you because I'm supposed to be used to missing you, but I'm not. I don't think I ever really will be because you fill a spot in my life that nobody else fills the same way. It's not a big spot, but it's close to my heart, and I am reminded of it often. And I am also so proud of you. I am so excited for all of the things that you are doing at your new school and with your potential future. I probably love you too much, but I think that's just real friendship: letting ourselves love too much.

4. I tried so hard not to become this person here, but the thing is, the situation isn't a circumstances or location thing. It's a matter of me being honest with who I actually am and I need to do that because I'm not sure that I ever really have up until this summer.

5. Thank you. You care for me in a way that I have never felt like I have deserved, and you love me more than I ever thought someone who I have been friends with for such a short amount of time could. All of you. You girls are my sisters and my mothers and grandmothers and whatever term of familial involvement you are, and you make me feel more at home than almost anything else in my life ever has.

6. I just want to be able to tell everyone who has just started college that your fears and homesickness and whatever else you might be feeling is completely normal and okay and beautiful. Starting college is really hard and people often discredit the emotions involved with it. Give yourselves patience and keep your eyes open for people who will be honest to you with who they are and genuinely want you for exactly who you are. And please remain honest with who you are, each of you has such a wonderful and unique thing to offer to the world, and I would never want to see that lost.

7. Things are different. It's hard for me to admit that things are different because I am always a rebel against change. Our friendships aren't the same, and if you took even two minutes to stop and ask how I was actually doing, you would see that I am not the person that I was when we were friends last year. You would see that the things you say to me sometimes really hurt, and you would see that I can't be friends with you in the same way that I was before, and even that is really hard for me. But I'm not trying to say it's your fault..I'm just trying to put it out there. Writing it in here probably does very little, because the likelihood of you even reading it or knowing it's about you is minimal.

8. I can't always be what you need me to be for you. For the first time in my life, I am being what I need to be for me.

9. I am torn between whether to go on More to Life or Lighthouse. Both of them, according to their descriptions online, would fit my life right now. Both of them have been advocated to me by people who have attended them and led them. But I need to make the decision for myself, and that's hard, too. I'm always afraid of making the "wrong" decision in situations like this. Even though I also know there really is no wrong decision.

10. Maybe I should do my homework now.
And, I'm not sure this blog post was really intended to benefit anyone else, although it'd be nice for you if it does. However, I think I just really needed to say these things.

What Makes Me.

There really isn't a simple way to go about trying to express everything that I am feeling right now. So, I find myself coming back to the blog that literally frustrated me out of my mind this summer. Every time over this summer that I tried to blog, I found myself not having the proper words for expression of what I was feeling or what I was experiencing at the time. So, maybe I wasn't supposed to blog to put it all over the internet. Maybe it wasn't really able to be expressed.

But now I'm back at school. And, I am still feeling so much. Different feelings and in a different way. Yet I'm feeling it regardless. I have to, or else I will cease to function.

What is the world, lately? Sometimes I forget how much the world changes when I'm not paying attention. [Then of course, there is the retort that I change a lot when the world isn't paying attention, but that's just an unnecessary touche.] My world this summer was completely different than anything else I'd ever experienced before. And now my world is so different than anything I've ever experienced. Even though it's still so much the same. Maybe the key is that I have changed so the world in which I live is being viewed in a different way.

Change is like the paradox of the universe. No one wants change, generally, but we all need it more than we are ever willing to admit. We needed to leave our parents' homes (whenever we did, or whenever we will), we all needed to meet all the people here that we met. And as much as I hate it, and probably other people do too, we needed to switch back and forth between the life that we have at home and the life we have at school. It's so that we can fully appreciate the things of both. There's things about being at school that are so fantastic it's unreal. Then there's things and people at home that are so perfect for me and my life that it blows my mind with unreality. Sometimes I step back and realize how ridiculously blessed I am in BOTH worlds in which I live, and I'm pretty damn overwhelmed.

Maybe there are things that piss me off sometimes. Things that kind of make me feel like the world is ending, or that I never did anything so awful to deserve the things that are happening to me. (That sounds way more dramatic written down than it did in my head.) But, the thing is, all of those things MAKE me. All these things that might make me cry, or stomp my foot, or vent for hours, or make me dance around in a glorious circle..those things are the things that make me into the person that is capable of moving back and forth between these two lives. Those are the things that make me lovable, and make me happy and sad. Those things that encourage me to FEEL even when I have spent so much of my life telling myself I shouldn't.

I'm pretty much just a normal person. Sometimes I might be better at expressing weird feelings like this that we all have, but I'm just generally pretty normal. I feel confident that if anyone reads this, they will relate to something that I've said. That's the beauty of humanity sometimes, I think. We never have to worry about anyone else being like us because we are fully and completely ourselves and no one else. However, there are parts of all of us that overlap. These are the things that draw people to us, the things that keep people in our lives. These are the things that make us friends.

So many little things that have so many purposes. Just give them a chance.

Bring it All Back to You

As much as it seems a little bit silly to admit that I love the song by S Club 7, I'm not ashamed to admit it. I remember going to my Grandma's house (because she had cable and we did not), and we would watch S Club 7 Marathons on holidays.
Maybe because I have the particular attachment of S Club 7 to my childhood, or maybe because it's just one of those songs that you have to dance to when you hear it, and you secretly know all the words after you hear the song once (and only once). But the lyrics have been running through my head and I can't stop thinking about them.

"Don't stop, never give up
Hold your head high and reach the top
Let the world see what you have got
Bring it all back to you

Hold on to what you try to be
Your individuality
When the world is on your shoulders
Just smile and let it go
If people try to put you down
Just walk on by don't turn around
You only have to answer to yourself

Don't you know it's true what they say
That life, it ain't easy
But your time's coming around
So don't you stop tryin'

Don't stop, never give up
Hold your head high and reach the top
Let the world see what you have got
Bring it all back to you
Dream of falling in love
Anything you've been thinking of
When the world seems to get too tough
Bring it all back to you

Na na na na..

Try not to worry 'bout a thing
Enjoy the good times life can bring
Keep it all inside you
Gotta let the feeling show
Imagination is the key
'Cause you are your own destiny
You never should be lonely
When time is on your side

Don't you know it's true what they say
Things are sent to try you
But your time's coming around
So don't you stop tryin'

Don't stop, never give up
Hold your head high and reach the top
Let the world see what you have got
Bring it all back to you
Dream of falling in love
Anything you've been thinking of
When the world seems to get too tough
Bring it all back to you"

Okay. So, I posted the lyrics in here, and I'm not usually the kind of person who posts lyrics but I think I need to listen to what that song is saying. Sometimes, lyricists kind of blow my mind.

And so, just listen to the song. I'm going to try to listen to the song and start thinking about myself more. I need to stop being so irrational, and stop letting my emotions control me. I need to learn how and why I need people, and let myself need certain things and be a certain person. I think for so long, I've just been so confused about who I am. Or at the very least, been denying myself so much of who I am. I spend so much time taking care of other people, and maybe I can't totally help it or anything..but for the first time in my life, at school and here in NC, I'm realizing that I don't take care of myself nearly as much as I should.

I'm pissed off and disenchanted with my life. But, the worst part is, I'm also really happy about my life. My emotions are ninjas and so they have a tendency to attack me when I am down and out for the count. If I'm being completely honest, I am absolutely awful at taking care of myself. And, it's a big deal for me to admit that, because as cliche as it is to say, admitting that I am bad at taking care of myself and that I need to take care of myself IS the first step to fixing the problem. But, in the meantime, I kind of need people to take care of me, too. However, I am suchamom, here. So many of the people here need me to take care of them, and even if they want to take care of me, they just don't know how to. And they might be learning, but I'm not really putting my heart into helping them help me.

I want to put my heart into it.
Bring it all back to me, I guess.

The End of the Beginning, and the Beginning of Everything In Between Here and Forever

8 months and 16 days ago. That's when I began my life here at Dayton. I'm not usually someone who cares much about details, but that was a rather large moment in my life. Not because that day itself really changed anything at all, but because I'm here now and I know that things have not been the same since that day.

I'm here now. I'm actually specifically sitting on the floor of a bedroom in the apartment of my (plural) fake moms. This might be the last time I spend a night sitting on the floor here, or, spending time here in general. Who cares? I suppose it's only a place and that's how it should stay. It's not about the location, it's about the people there: the things that have happened with them and you and the way in which you have become in that location.

So, I guess I must keep that in mind when I leave Dayton for almost four months. It's not about the place at all, it's about the people that I have met here and the person I am right now (not even the person I was...just the person that I am!). Dayton has sincerely ripped my heart out of my chest and made me into something that I never imagined that I could be. It has morphed me and shaped me and created me into something more beautiful than I ever thought that I could be. And maybe it's not that my beauty has changed or increased at all, but rather, that I have become able to recognize it. And for that, I am basically eternally grateful.

I have to tell everyone something though. Guys, I've fallen in love. This is going to sound excessively corny and cheesy and gushy to the maximum extreme, but I have truly fallen in love with God this year. We might still be in the "talking" phase, where I don't know completely where I stand or what's going to happen with Him and me, but, my goodness He is so wonderful and He makes me so happy..no..so joyful. When I think back to this school year, the last 8.5 months, I am overwhelmed with all of the blessings and challenges and love and amazement and everything else that God has given me. He has filled my life with so much and taken away so much of what I no longer needed. And I fought Him the entire time, but when it came right down to it, it didn't matter, He was not going anywhere. And He's still not. I might leave Dayton, but He's going with me. And the best part about that is that I know He is also going with each and every one of my friends and so I know that we will still all be together, at least in the fact that we are with Him. I know that's extraordinarily cheesy sounding and cliche and religious for the people who aren't, but I don't even care. It's the pure and honest truth that I know each day and that keeps me wanting to get out of bed every morning. Dayton has helped me find so much truth and beauty in my love for the Lord. My life has never been as beautiful as it is every moment that I am alive. It gets more beautiful every single moment simply because I am alive and I belong to God! That literally blows my mind every single time I think about it.

I'm not sure I entirely know the person that I was when I showed up here on that day. I'm not sure anyone really knew who they were. It was like gaining the key to our new rooms gave us the key to our new lives and the new person that we would become within that room. It unleashed a whole new realm of possibilities that we couldn't understand or explain until we were living it, and even then, we had no prayer of understanding or explaining it, but it changed because then we could feel it. Those feelings have helped us to make choices, those feelings have helped us discover whoever it was we were supposed to be, those feelings have helped us to address all the things we didn't want to address but being forced to address these things allowed us to grow. Those feelings were part of the reason that I got out of bed each day because I knew that there were such possibilities and such endless things to be known. When I was trying to figure all of these things out I almost gave up so many times. I almost lost myself in the mix of things. But people continually pulled me out, and now, now that I am returning the key to my room and the key to the life that I have lived here this year...I am forced to reflect back on all of these things.

I don't know what I am supposed to say to try to sum up this year. I don't know how I am supposed to take so much of who I am now and what happened to me and who I met and put it into words. Maybe for once, I'm not supposed to. Maybe it's only supposed to be for me to know right now. But yet, here I am, still trying to put it into words because it isn't enough for me only to have access to these feelings. And I want to try to remember this in the future.

I think something that is a very large part of so much of what has happened here in me and around me and with me is the people. I can't even begin to understand what kind of people have been in, left, come into, and gone out of my life this year. I have been hurt and broken and shattered and fallen into so many pieces in so many ways this year. Parts of me that I didn't even know that I had or was holding onto were lost and broken and sometimes I truly thought that I was not going to be able to pick up the pieces or figure out how to fit myself back together again so many of the times. But each time, God would give me the opportunity to be alive and whole and beautiful once again. Whether this was of my own accord, or someone else taking the time to do it for me, it continually happened this year. I could not be more thankful for the people that took the time on me this year.

From the people in my life this year, I learned so much. I learned that love is reckless and all-encompassing. It is painful and wonderful and hurts and heals us. It is something that cannot be put into words when it is being felt, and something that we have endlessly to give, if we remember that the most important love is that for your Savior and that for yourself, because if we have these loves, then we can give and receive all the other kinds of loves in a more righteous and beautiful way.
I also learned that friendship, when formed in the right ways, has no loopholes. It has no boundaries, either. A true friend accepts and loves you for exactly who you are. It isn't necessary to be afraid or question your value to them because they want you. A true friend wants to be there in whatever way that they can, and a true friend wants to provide you with what you need. By being a true friend, those people probably will provide you with exactly what you need..even though it takes us awhile to see or understand or admit that what they do for us is, in fact, just what we need.
I learned that living is astoundingly magnificent. Getting the chance to wake up each day is something that I have for so long taken for granted. Someone this year used the phrase "thank you for this day that I have not been promised" in a prayer. This kind of blew my mind. This one line in this one prayer actually changed the way that I was choosing to live each day. When I began to look at things with more of this attitude and less of one that hated waking up for class and homework and life in general each day..I became so utterly obsessed with being alive. I know it seems kind of like an odd thing to be obsessed with, but...I almost lost some people in my life this year that were extremely important to me. Realizing that I might not be able to see those people ever again, and then realizing that I used to largely not value my own life..put a lot of things in perspective for me. My life is from God, and..I deserve to be loved and deserve to have the fullest most splendid life that I possibly can. I have learned that I deserve so much.
I learned that fear isn't always a bad thing. Fear can mean growth. Fear can mean that there is more good to come. Fear can mean that I am, in general, at least feeling. And most of all, that fear can be overcome. It is not something that is unconquerable. It is something that truly can make me grow. It is something that can be one of the most beautiful parts of me if I let it help me, and not hurt me.
I learned that school is important, but we can figure out how to fit it into our lives that are social and growing and changing. It doesn't have to rule your life, but it can actually be helpful to your interactions with people and your knowledge of the world. It can help prevent extreme naivety. Just putting in a plug for higher education.
I learned that my parents always have been right..and that I am slowly becoming my mother.
I learned that who I am is always enough, as long as I learn to let it be.
Mostly, I have learned. I have learned that I know a lot, I am always learning more, and I am also in the process of knowing nothing.

In general, I am just so thankful. I am so thankful for all of the love that is surrounding me all the time, and is constantly present in my life. I am so thankful for the laughter, and the people to hold me when I have the tears, too. I am so thankful for the fact that my parents make so many sacrifices so that I can be at this school. I am so thankful for this school..the teachers, the lessons learned, the people here who fill my heart entirely to overflowing, and then catch the overflow when it hurts. I am so thankful for my life..every day that I get to wake up to. Everything terrible that reminds me that much more that I am alive..and everything wonderful that helps to remind me how grateful I should be. I am so thankful for the past 8 months and 16 days...because they were. It doesn't even matter what they were..just simply that they were.

And I am thankful that I can know that while Dayton is where all of this happened..it is not about the place. It's about the people there: the things that have happened with them and you and the way in which you have become in that place.

And oh, how I know this now. How I have felt, how I have loved, how I have changed,
how I have become.

Those are the things that will matter...for the next four months while I am not here.
And for forever.

"I remember that day my life changed,
And now leaving here seems so strange,
The love and friendships will be summer's glue,
Cause now I know..I'll be homesick for here, too.

Here is where I belong,
Here is where I learned my song.
Here helps me be all I can be,
Right here, I'm fully me.
And when I forget the words,
I know here..I'm still heard."