To Be Or Not To Be

I was about five minutes behind.

There are pros and cons to working at the bakery on a General Conference weekend.

Pro: I work with a slew of nice LDS ladies and we have our own radio in the room, so we listen to Conference.

Con: I'm at work. And work isn't like an office job where I just sit and wait for people to walk in the door or something. We're constantly in motion. So Conference tends to turn into white noise if you're not standing right next to the radio.

I'd gone to the freezer.

And naturally, I had picked the most opportune moment to take the now three minute trek to the freezer, for in the course of my crossing the bakery in one direction I had missed the most influential announcement of my generation: the missionary age change.

One moment I was walking to the freezer, life was normal. The next I was on the return trip, suddenly catching chunks of conversation buried in the bakery bustle about 18 year old missionaries.

I didn't understand.

And I wouldn't understand for at least another hour; I was the only one listening who'd missed it.

I was facing the microwave when I'd learned of a surety that all the facts I'd constructed about missionaries had been shifted and skewed and that this was the way they would be. This was modern revelation. Girls could go at nineteen.

I'd been nineteen for nearly a year.

I looked at the microwave. "I could go on a mission."


But you see, I hadn't spent the year writing a novel or reading John Donne poetry or anything and everything I'd expected to do with my nineteenth year. I'd spent the year slipping down a muddy hillside I'd made the mistake of locating my senior year in high school. I'd spent the year convincing myself my testimony was "good enough" and in the past I'd been "spiritual enough" and of the Lord I was "loved enough" that whatever temptations I faltered under wouldn't really matter, because I was still very righteous. I was still of the Tribe of Israel. I was still elected of God.

It was in that moment, facing the microwave, that I had to realize I wasn't that girl anymore. I wasn't that Molly Mormon from 9th grade who ate up seminary and the gospel and was going to do everything possible to get to the Celestial Kingdom with flying colors and "Exceeds Expectations" stamped on her report card. I wasn't that girl who studied the scriptures and prayed and acknowledged or received spiritual guidance and promptings.

That girl would have been like the many thousands that day that cried and jumped and squealed and submitted their papers. That girl would have gone on a mission.

I wasn't that girl.


I'd spent a year investing in makeup to paint my image in what I remembered a diligent Mormon looked like. I donned the knock-off apparel of someone who at first glance might look like a dedicated member. I spent a year trying to look like I was trying instead of actually trying.

It wasn't until the microwave that I fully acknowledged it. It wasn't until the age change, and the realization that I was nowhere near submitting papers, and that 21 was suddenly just over a year away, that I wouldn't be worthy to submit them by the "old" sister missionary age, let alone the new.

And things started to change. It took a few more nudges, and one excruciating act of courage and discomfort that--sorry--I'm not going to post on the internet, for me to start to come back.


Perhaps the trouble was that I'd never considered a mission. Girls aren't "required" to serve. I'm lazy. I always have been. Each time missionary work was brought up in every church related anything, it was always prefaced with "girls aren't required to serve," so I'd dismiss it. I bundle up the mission notion and toss it in the corner with the laundry I keep forgetting to fold, dust off my hands and say "When I'm 21 I'll decide."

That's great for an eight-year-old. And a twelve-year-old. And a seventeen-year-old, but suddenly you're twenty, and suddenly everyone a year younger than you is signing off of Facebook and signing in to the ranks of God's army and you're....staring at a microwave.

I'd always thought it would be easy. I'd obviously continue in righteousness, so worthiness wouldn't be a question when I reached that crucial point of 21, but there was something else that stopped past-Erica from daydreaming about skirts and tracting.

Marriage.

I was going to be in a relationship, nearing or in the process of getting married, because it's not hard to find a soulmate in the movies, it's not hard to court and wed with Barbie dolls. It's not hard to locate love in Disney.

I wouldn't have to go, because I'd have a man to keep me here.

Spoiler alert: there's not a man. So far there's never been a man. Just a series of daydreams in dreamclouds above my head that are popped before they can progress.

So far I'm everything past-Erica didn't want to be. So far I'm nega-past-Erica. And, along with waking up to the realization that life isn't as cookie cutter as you can make it with Barbie dolls, I had to acknowledge that I don't have an excuse not to go. I could honestly serve. There's nothing keeping me here.

I took a mission prep class as an Institute class this semester. It seemed like neutral territory; either way I'd emerge a Mormon more comfortable with sharing the gospel, whether I did that with a nametag for 18 months or as an average Jane for forever. I kept waiting for this ah-ha moment, this bolt of lightning, this angels chorus, this earthquake of a revelation that YOU ARE TO SERVE A MISSION.

Spoiler alert: there's not been a revelation.

At least...not like that.


Part of the conditions of my excruciating act of courage and discomfort was that I turned to the Lord in tear-streaked prayer and received no answer. I pleaded and read the scriptures and waited for His hand, but He didn't lend it. He left it to me to decide. He left it to me to be brave or continue on in my solitary laziness. He let me choose which path.

I feel He's doing it again. There's been no revelation, no realization that I need to go. I want to go. I'd like to go. It makes sense to go. But it makes sense to stay. It makes sense to continue as I have been, to remain secure in my finances, to graduate on track.

But mission prep is doing what I was afraid it would; it's talking me into going.

I just...I feel excellent all the time. Good things are happening to me, and in the past four months I've become closer and more lenient on the Lord than I ever was in 9th grade or any heightened spiritual point of my mortality. He is with me. He loves me. And I love having that feeling, that spirit, I love carrying this gift of God and siphoning it off to others in word and deed. I love giving what He gives me. I love the feeling of testifying, the strength of His doctrine. And I could spend 18 months sharing it. I could run away to wherever and whomever He needs me to be and lose myself in Him.

I don't know. I'm not deciding any time soon. 21 has been too long stuck in my head for me to go against it. I've got some months ahead of me. A lot can change. For now I'm sticking with the answer He gave me facing the microwave, the sliver of truth I was ready enough to receive when the thousands of girls became sisters:

Live like you're going to go. Live like you're preparing for a mission.

That may be all I need, or all I need for now. It may be up to me and if I decide to make that sacrifice; He won't screw me over for straying from my course for His work.

I don't know. And maybe I won't know for a while. But I'm putting Him on my horizons and letting Him worry about all the little things. I'm living my religion, loving my religion, and working again for heaven.

To be, or not to be.

That is the question.

Maybe the Best Hasn't Happened Yet

Let me teach you something:

Life doesn't turn out like you expect it to.

And regardless how many times you learn this lesson, the knowledge never seems to stick. You stroll away and continue to make expectations out of life, to personify your view of an ideal world onto the actions of others. You place a contingency on the fault of mankind.

Inevitably, things fall through.

Here's a story.


In ninth grade the local theatre became home to a budding improv comedy troupe: The Improvables. I was taking acting classes there at the time, and attended the shows as often as a junior high student lenient on her parents' inclination to drive her around at ten o'clock at night could. The group continued to play and I waxed on in age and entered high school.

My junior year going to The Improvables was a rad thing to do; a couple boys from musical were in the troupe, so a gaggle of us would go after football games to support. It became a regular thing for me and my best friend at the time to go see the shows weekly (they only performed Friday nights). Before long audience participation games began to creep up.

I volunteered.

Every time. To the extent that I recall Paco once telling me no, someone else needed to have a turn.

You see, I wanted to be an Improvable. I'd taken acting classes at the theatre for five years, and each "semester," if you will, started with a few weeks of improv games. It was invigorating and excellent and I loved it.

The Improvables did beginner workshops, but they were on Saturday mornings, and I was barely nine months into a job at a bakery that had said flat out from the beginning "You have to work every Saturday. You can't take them off for dances or things. Saturdays are a must."

So I could never workshop. So I could never be an Improvable.

The closest I would get was audience participation.


Sad story, right? Another dismissed dream and abandoned ambition. Another letdown, another aspect of my ideal life to lack.

You're right. It's horribly sad. To 16 year-old Erica. It's sad in the moment.

Because, as a junior in high school not cognitive enough to ask her super kind coworker/boss if she could come in a few hour late on Saturdays for a month, did I know management at the store would change? Did I know our numbers would dwindle and I would be the most experienced closer left? Did I know the separation between morning shift and closing shift on a Saturday would become more separate and distinct?

As a junior in high school did I know I'd be friends with Paco on facebook and get an invite to Improvables auditions? Did I know, though not making it in the troupe after auditions, that I'd become well acquainted with one of them who would invite me to linger with the Improvables after at Dee's? Did I know there'd be a beginner's workshop I was capable of attending for the first time?

Did I know in four years time I'd be accepted into the troupe? Did I know in four years I'd finally be an Improvable?

No. No I didn't.


And that's my point, reader. That's my point.

We see what's around us, we see where we're at immediately. I don't know where I'll be next year, I sure as heck don't know where I'll be in four years. I'd forgotten the Improvable dream. I'd been letdown, been upset, and moved on. I'd applied for colleges and wound up at the one I least wanted to go to and would most fully love with all my heart. I'd focused on performing well so I could get a bit of the spotlight senior year. I started decorating cakes at work.

The Improvables crossed back into my perceptions when I was ready for them. But I didn't know.


Life doesn't turn out like you expect it to. I expected to be an Improvable in high school. I expected to go to college in Virginia. I expected to be in the publishing process by my 20th birthday. Those things didn't happen. My life is awful.

To 16 year-old Erica.



My great expectations have fallen through. I've been shattered again for assuming too much of a person, and it's the same lesson I learned before. The same lesson I planned to pen in the novel I was going to have in print by now. I'm not in control here. I'm not the all-seeing eye. I don't have a magic coin that makes my wishes come true or a Brechtian ability to break the fourth-wall. I am subject to my story. And no, it's not going how I expected at all. It's not taking the turns I mapped out over the years. I'm not where I wanted to be.

I'm where I need to be.


You can live your life in bitterness, thinking of all the "if's" and "maybe's." You can focus on the failure to win his affections or your inability to get cast in a show outside of an educational setting. You can self-depreciate over your writer's block and lack of time management and hate every obstacle the wind has blown your way.

Or you can look at the musical you're directing, that 100% fell in your lap. You can look at the good fortune of having a college with proficiency in your major so close to home. You can smile that you met Jason Mraz and Daphne Willis performed a mini concert for you and... you're an Improvable.

It was four years more than you expected, but you're an Improvable.

What's coming next? Where am I going? How can I dare be discontent over the cracks my hopes are falling in when there is such a blessing coming down the turnpike? How can I muddle and murmur when tomorrow is an open slate, and the most skilled hand is waiting to fill it?

Live in the moment, that's the trick to happiness. The past is passed. What made me happy then won't make me happy to dwell upon now; I'm not there anymore. The view from here will never be the view from thirty feet back. A painting is different facing you than from 180 degrees. The future is as unwritten as my next breath; safety lies in patience. Happiness comes from the wait. When I idealize and fantasize tomorrow is when the pain builds up. Life doesn't turn out like you expect it to.

Stop expecting it to.

I may have said this here before but I feel it should be said again: Stop praying for what you expect. Pray to find what He expects for you.

He's writing the story. He knows your course. He knows you're 16 and can only see this moment, this hour of broken expectations and hopes, this instant of failed ideals. He knows what you'll be in four years, what you'll miss, what you'll crave, what you'll actually have. He knows what you'll need and He's planned when to give it to you.

I didn't know then. I could have never known then all of the blessings and miracles that would shatter through my stain glass sunlight and illuminate my life. So many things have happened in the last few months, so many dreams/hopes/wishes have been brought into reality in ways I never expected. And all I have expected has crumbled in contrition, dampening the levity of life.

Hope in Him. Pip, take these great expectations and set them aside. See the world for what it really is, see the beauty of your life in His eyes, in His plan.

So your blueprint wasn't fulfilled. That's not what He was hired to do. He's not working for you.

He's working with you, and giving in the moment. The moment won't be now. The moment might be in four years, but it's coming.

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself." -Matt 6:34-

Four years from now I'll look back at these failed expectations and they'll either be humorously pathetic or surprisingly fulfilled.

Who knows, maybe the best hasn't happened yet.

Eyes Wide Open

Yesterday wasn't a good day.

I mean, ultimately it wasn't actually half bad, but from the get-go it was...a little rough.

Perhaps it was the three and a half hours of sleep, or other conditions beyond my control, but I couldn't shake this horrible feeling of being lost. I had symptoms of it prior to that day, as you can see in the previous blog post. I was hating life again. I was hating where I am and what I'm doing, which I knew was ridiculous because so many excellent things are happening right now. I'm directing an elementary school musical. I'm assistant stage manager for a musical on campus. I'm finally able to participate in improv workshops, something I've been yearning to do since my junior year in high school. I'm acting like myself on a daily basis in public locations.

I was aware feeling the way I felt was stupid, but I couldn't shake it. I couldn't get rid of that all-consuming sorrow and despondency. I prayed like forty times in four hours. And I felt incrementally better each time, but there was still a constant under current of "things suck."

And then I went to mission prep.

I don't know if I'm going on a mission, let me say so up front. A couple months back I started taking life seriously again, and putting my faith in my Lord and His gospel on a higher pedestal than everything else. I've never planned on going on a mission. I always blew it off with the confidence that I'd just decide when I was 21, because by that point I'd so obviously be in a committed relationship/married/nearly married and therefore not be expected to go. So I wouldn't go.

So I never considered going.

Even when they changed the age, it wasn't like I knew immediately that's what I needed to do. I thought about it a lot, what this would mean for me, suddenly aware that 21, though no longer the limit, was not as far away as I imagined as a thirteen year-old in Young Womens. My answer upon hearing the announcement and pondering, there at work standing by the microwave, was to live my life as if I were to go on one, something I hadn't been doing prior to that moment, and something I honestly didn't actually put into effect until about a month later.

I've been a little embarrassed to talk about it, because when you say you haven't been living the gospel fully in a predominately Mormon society, the judgment most often passed--and you realize this because you've been guilty of doing it yourself--is that obviously they've done something drastic like break the Word of Wisdom or let someone into their bed; of which I did neither. But, we were looking in Joseph Smith History in Sunday School, and read this verse, and...how can I be embarrassed now?

JSH 1: 28 "...I frequently fell into many foolish errors, and displayed the weakness of youth, and the foibles of human nature; which, I am sorry to say, led me into divers temptations, offensive in the sight of God. In making this confession, no one need suppose me guilty of any great or malignant sins. A disposition to commit such was never in my nature. But I was guilt of levity, and sometimes associated with jovial company, etc., not consistent with that character which ought to be maintained by one who was called of God as I had been. But this will not seem very strange to any one who recollects my youth, and is acquainted with my native cheery temperament."

Why I never even knew this existed I could not tell you.

Actually, false. I didn't know because I didn't need it until now.

To return to where we were before the digression, once I started fully doing my part with regards to faith, testimony, the gospel, I started to turn to Him for everything; something I should have been doing instead of taking a year hiatus. I realized I'm at this point in my life where everything can either go right or go wrong. I'm an adult. If I had chosen or if it had been right for me I could be living on my own right now. There are peers my age not going to school, working full time to build a life. There are girls on my Facebook page who are home tending to children. I can't afford another year of figuring things out for myself--I figured out nothing in that year but a system for laziness.

So I ask Him everything.

And with regards to every big decision, my answer is the same:

Wait.

I took a mission prep class because I didn't know what I'm waiting for. I still don't. But I saw no harm in preparing for a mission that I may or may not go on, because if I don't end up going, at least by taking the class I followed the prompting given that day in October, and worked toward living as though I were going to go.

I'd been waiting all day for mission prep, because I felt so sluggishly bogged and despondent and the small nudges of comfort from my inward praying for peace wasn't enough.

I struggled for a moment, sitting in mission prep, my mind still insisting on sinking into the tar pit of my heart and giving up, when the fog cleared, just a little.

I remembered a moment from Friday night, out with the Improvables at Dee's. I'd been talking to my BFF Charlotte (who I honestly hardly know but she's super nice and awesome, and I can see us becoming some form of BFF's some day), and I immediately felt better. Everything that was bothering me, all the cannons that were sinking my ship, ceased. I realized that though this one fragment of my life is less than desirable, so much more of it is amazing. And the thing for me to do now is focus on the amazing parts, and let the other sort itself out with time.

Then these three girls put in a video they'd made. From what I gleaned they are three best friends, all headed on their missions. They'd compiled footage of each of them opening their mission calls, so that each would read the same line and progress down the letter.

I watched them each uncover where they were going. Dominican Republic, New York, Wisconsin, and that old thought drifted in through my new found peace.

I wonder where He'd send me.

I started idealizing Virginia because Jason Mraz was from there, but the more I looked into it the more I realized it truly was a place I'd like to see. But that's the thing: I've never seen it. Virginia became a place in my mind, a metaphor for a happy place, an area of solace. Comfort. But I realized one day everything I've allowed Virginia to be is everything a mission would be.

I've daydreamed heading out there and finding myself, coming across the right people, becoming a fulfilled person. Experiencing joy. I'd take care of myself, because I'd be on my own. I'd gain experience I lack sitting here on my bed in my parents' house. I'd grow.

I don't remember when, but it occurred to me a mission would be that long-imagined month or more staycation in Virginia. But a mission would be less risky. A mission would have more stability than a college student deciding to embark on an adult life across the country, where no one could help her if she needed it.

Why not? I thought, crying for the third time that morning, but for an entirely different reason than heartache.

Why not a mission?

I'm not saying I'm going. I'm not saying I've decided.

I'm saying I've decided to actually think about it. To finally set myself down and determine, prayerfully, what I'm meant to do with my mortal sojourn, instead of waving a hand and saying "future Erica will have to decide."

I'm checking unknown, for now. I'm not expecting an answer now; I don't think He'd give it. He knows how much of a one-track mind I have. The time will come. Someday the waiting will be over. But for now I'm waiting productively.

For now I'm waiting in Him.