motion

Life has been set in motion. I feel like all these little moments and pieces of my life have been set in motion to add up to something. I don't know how they all fit together but somehow they do. I've heard several people talk about how 2012 is going to be their year. It holds promise, potential, and life. 2012 is my year too. It began with me starting my lasts at dear old BYU. It will involve several amazing trips, moving away, starting anew, belonging to a new home and (hopefully) a new school. It will mean more fun times with friends, random adventures, time to read, time to live. Each day I wake up with a sense of being on the edge of something great. Guess what? It's a great place to be. But the funny thing is, I'm not anxious for things to change. I'm learning to love this now. And I'm finding reasons to live in this moment instead of longing for the past or future. As the great C.S. Lewis wrote, "this is the eternal now." "This moment contains all moments." The first presidency message this month is about living a full life. As my home teachers taught me this inspired message, I couldn't help but feel the truth of these words:

Don’t limit yourself and don’t let others convince you that you are limited in what you can do. Believe in yourself and then live so as to reach your possibilities.

You can achieve what you believe you can. Trust and believe and have faith.

And this song (as cheesy as it is) keeps coming to mind.


I hope your 2012 holds as much potential.

love love love
M

dandelion wine

It started with an early morning. The sun was flooding into the room and the light surrounding me, lifting my eyelids to enjoy the day. Warmth enveloped me.

His name will be had for good and evil in all nations, kindreds, and tongues. "Consider the implications of that announcement" My thoughts turned to gratitude for that man. My mind has been full of his words, his story, and his faith. Read this. Or this. Or maybe this.

I climbed those steps. Each time I feel like it should get easier but it doesn't. I was met by a sloping, perfectly cared-for hill of green grass and a view that belonged on a postcard. Enjoy it. Take advantage of it. Exploit it. It will always be there but I will not always be here. Remember.

I cuddled to him close, his tired eyes struggling to awake. He rubbed his blanky back and forth in his ear subconsciously and burrowed his head in my side. That smile. Those eyes. I just melt. He pulled a popsicle out of the box "here ya go sissy!" pulled one out for himself and we were out on the lawn laughing as his popsicle fell apart and he slurped up as much as he could. I've never seen such excitement bottled up in one little body. Perfect. Day.

I didn't want to do it, but I knew I had to. I told myself I'd make it quick and easy. No pain. I felt like I my feet were dragging as I stumbled out of the house. But as the cement turned into asphalt and the song finally came on, I couldn't help but smile. Faster, faster, faster. Push, breathe, harder. More. I wanted to breathe harder, until the oxygen permeated every last inch of my body and soul. I looked around: green. Someone seemed to have slipped a green filter lens over my eyes for that is all I could behold. Life.

It's finally summer.
It's here. I'm here. Happy. Content. Grateful. Free.
M

pilgrimage

The Tel Aviv Airport

The Old City

Augusta Victoria Church

Model City: The Israel Museum

Tel Aviv

Tel Beer She'va

Wilderness of Zin overlook

The Pyramids

The Sphinx

Saqqara

The Camel Safari

Citadel of Salah Al-Din

Ibn Tulun Mosque

Mt. Sinai

The Dome of the Rock

Valley of Elah (where David met Goliath)

Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Hezekiah's Tunnel

Dormission Abbey

Madaba

Petra

The Church of the Nativity

The Red Sea

Caesarea Maritima

In Galilee, near the Golan Heights

Gamla (site of one of the first clashes in the Great Revolt)

Bet She'an

The bus where my tired feet spent many hours

Masada

The Dead Sea

walking on the usual route back to the Center from the City

home. 18 days. 12 hours. 37 minutes. 07 seconds and counting...

Each second it gets further away, memories become that much more distant, and the feeling that it was all a dream-an alternate universe-becomes more real. It once again feels like a distant land. When I think such a thought I immediately accompany it with several others. I force my mind to recall the palace that is the Center. I remind myself of the pain my legs felt as I walked up the hill to the Old City. I try to hearken the smells, the business, the faces back to my mind. I can hear the prayer call filling my ears with beauty. Most of all I try to summon that glow, that constant uplifting and power I didn’t know I had until it was gone. It was real. I know it. I know it.

Home is good. Home is hard. Home is here, but home is somewhere distant as well.

We sat around the oasis table eating our typical lunch of fruit, some questionable meat, egg and pasta concoction, pitas and more pitas. It was one of the first days and we were taking a break from our many orientations and were discussing our new lives and the journey we were about to embark on. One of the boys remarked, "I think more than anything this is a pilgrimage, that's what Brother Huntington said last night and that is how I'm going to treat it from now on."

His words struck me. At the time I did not fully understand how this journey was a pilgrimage, but now it is the best word, for lack of a better one, to describe the journey that I went on. Thousands of people make their own pilgrimage to Jerusalem. They sacrifice time, money, and the way of the world to come to this ancient place and pay their respects to the sacredness this land possesses. But the sacredness of this place does not just come from the places themselves, but from the value that the people put on them. From their goodness and devotion to God. From their yearning to become better, more like Him. From their pilgrimage.

I thought of the best way to document my journey in Jerusalem in a meaningful way. To me, this sums up my journey. A piece of me and a piece of the land. Just a small smattering of all the places were my feet walked. Evidence I passed through there, but really that the land passed through me, whispered it's secrets into my ear, and guided me as I learned to open my mind and heart.

A pilgrim's footsteps in Jerusalem.

You’ll find some glaring omissions in my collection. Where are the quintessential Jerusalem sights? Where is the Garden Tomb, the Garden of Gethsemane, Galilee?

My foot prints to do not appear in such places because I consider them sacred ground. I am one among thousands who have walked that hallowed ground and have been touched, my heart marked rather than my footprint left. Such an event is deemed sacred and deserves reverence, written upon the walls of my heart and kept close.

My last piece is at the Center. The white limestone characterizing the Center and the Eternal City. My empty, worn, walking shoes. These shoes contain so many memories, not only in Jerusalem, but they represent a whole life before my journey to that distant land. An old life I shed in Jerusalem to become a better person. And a piece of me I left in the land I love. Empty shoes to be filled by other students. Others who will love the land just as much as I do, who will feel the center is their home, and the people their people. And I, I will continue on.

my heart belongs in Jerusalem, and I pray for peace.

beginning a new kind of journey, but taking all I have learned from this monumental one,
m

halfway

This last week marks halfway. It makes me so sad to think half of the bliss is already over, but so grateful that I have so much manna ahead of me. As I reflect on these last 8 weeks of my journey, I see already how much I have changed. My mind and eyes have been stretched and opened to so much knowledge and goodness. My heart as been softened and healed, pulled and pushed, and grown to include two peoples that exist in one place, but at first glance seem so different. The other day as we took the short cut from Aladdin's (the money changer) to the nativity shops, it hit me: I live here. It is one of my homes. A piece of my heart has fallen in love here. And although I will not let go of all the goodness I found in other places, a part of me belongs here. Jerusalem is my city. It is such a good feeling. That first day, that first sight of the Old City, was so overwhelming with sights and sounds, I didn't ever think I would grow to know it. Although I still have so much to learn from this Holy Land, I am beginning to know the city. It is such an enlightening feeling. We had a fireside tonight in which both of the speakers reminded us that we are different, set apart from the world here, we bear a light, a light of truth. They reminded us to not just walk this land, but to let it pass through us. To have scriptures and thoughts come to us as we see these wondrous sites. And that we will not find Christ at the Garden tomb or on Herod's Steps, but in our hearts, as we study his life and teachings and strive to live and become more like Him. So inspiring.

My faith has grown, my heart changed, and my countenance hopefully becoming more like His.

embracing the journey,
m

lucky

Fannypacks+sunscreen+flowyskirt+sunglasses+hat+hymnbook+ fieldtripguide+40students+2instructors+onebigbus=ourfirst fieldtrip. We went to several lookouts throughout the area to get a feel for the geography of the area so we can place important events in the history and Bible within the setting right outside the classroom. As we walked on a bridge over crusader-period ruins leaving the first site, it suddenly hit me. I am here. And for a moment I caught a glimpse of the vastness of this opportunity . Excitement filled my bones and my step quickened as I stepped onto the bus for the next adventure.

During Old Testament today disappointment met my ears as we all learned we would not be going to the western wall tonight due to another day of tight security. I suddenly felt a whinny voice rise up from the depths to fill my head. I wanted to ask why, and to say it wasn't fair, that I had been looking forward to this. But something quickly, but quietly stifled those thoughts. My heart began to fill with gratitude. As I listened to my teacher, who was equally upset, explain why, I once again appreciated the moment. That I am here. That I get to go to the Western Wall at all. That I get to learn and grow in ways I never thought possible. That I get to have once in a lifetime opportunities in plenty. That I get to be spiritually and mentally fed by teachers each day that are inspired and impassioned enough to let us dip into their wells of knowledge and drink deeply. That I am slowly, subtly, in the quiet moments, guided to become.
lucky, blessed, guided,
m