Time To Move On

Can anyone believe that it's taken me so long to post again? Until a couple hours ago, I hadn't even checked my email or gone online once in the previous 48 hours. Kind of crazy for me. I wasn't really missing it all that much; I just didn't have any readily available access to it.

There's a lot to say about everything. I guess the main thing being that it just feels weird to be back in Provo. Just plain ol' weird. Except for the mission and a brief two month stint in Spring '04, I have always always always had Dave. I don't think anyone in this world gets how close we are except for Dave. Some of you think you might get it, but only Dave is really agreeing with me right now. And besides not having Dave here, it's just weird to be here without anyone that I'm pretty tight with and then also being in a living situation where I'm coming in completely blind.

Met my roommate. I dropped by when the ward was in church, but luckily for me he was home. Maybe he missed church because he was busy polishing off the Camel cigarettes in the trash, or the case of Coronas. Admittedly, that's a first for me in my roommate situation. At least when Greg drank he was more discrete about it.

The weather is weird. I drove in through heavy rain and windstorms. Heavy. I guess it had been in the upper 90s the last several days, only to get really rainy up here and tomorrow it's dropping down to 62. Weird. Then back up into the 80s after tomorrow.

On the plus side I have a beautiful view of the valley, my place is way nicer than any other that I've had while up at school, and there are tons of cool people and cute girls. I didn't get a chance to go to my ward today because I was still figuring out where I lived. And while my roommate may have some struggles with the word of wisdom, otherwise he seems like a pretty chill guy. I got an amazing blessing from Dave's dad before coming up. I'm kind of (maybe only slightly) excited for school and to find out what that will be like. And I like Utah clouds. It really could be a lot worse.

Years ago when the missionary who taught me the gospel bore his final testimony in our ward, he quoted Tom Petty's Time To Move On:

It's time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
Yeah it's time to move on, it's time to get going.

I started listening to that song and I almost started crying.

I know this is only temporary, and I'll be back in a few months, but I just love you people so much. Eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard the kind of love I feel for you guys.

There have been a few times in the 24 hours since I've arrived where I've questioned whether or not this is the place that I'm really supposed to be. I've asked myself several times already if I did actually ask in prayer if this was the right decision, and if I received the right interpretation of that answer. And I think I did get this one right. Sometimes it escapes me too quickly that I started considering and praying about this move in about May of last year. Not to say that I got any specific prompting that I needed to do this, but I didn't feel any kind of resistance to the move at any point (it's actually kind of neat how well everything has fallen into place) and I think I'm at least in tune enough to be able to interpret a 'no' answer.

I really do feel like this is an opportunity for me to grow in ways that I need to and that I just couldn't by staying in California. And it was hard to leave home. It was really hard to leave my mom not really knowing if she's going to be okay or not. It's really hard to leave old friends, and newer ones that I've become closer with over the last year or two. It's really hard and if I'm being truthful, it breaks my heart. The best part of my life is due entirely to my association with you.

But I think this move is important for me professionally, personally, and spiritually. I think I've mentioned this before, but my mission president used to always use the potted plant analogy - that the potted plant can never outgrow the pot that it's placed in. For it to have any chance of really growing, it has to get outside the confines of the pot so it can extend its roots. I think with the job that I had, with the ward and singles scene that I was in, I just had grown as much as I could within that pot. So I'm hoping that this is the right place for me to be.