It looks like all of my posts are about Yannick. This blog is about my life, whatever I feel like writing, so since he was the love of my life, I guess it makes sense. But, it has been more than 6 months now since I have talked to him, 8 months since I have seen him, and 10 weeks since I learned of his death. I still miss him just like I have ever since I let him leave, but I am not standing still. I am moving to Mongolia. Yes, Mongolia. The country that is between Russia and China. I'm going for 18 months to teach English and to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them learn about the restored gospel. I leave on December 17, exactly one year after I broke up with Yannick the first time. I'm going to be a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Life is not how you expect it to be. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a teacher or an actress, but most of all I wanted to be a mom, get married right out of high school and have ten kids. Then as I got older I realized I wanted to go to college and have a career, and still a family. I never wanted to serve a mission, that didn't fit in with the plans I had at all. When I was about to turn 19 I decided that I should go on a mission, partly because that's what all of my friends were doing at the time. My heart wasn't in it though, and I didn't ever turn in my papers. Because of my indecision in those months, I gave up my scholarship to the dream school I was attending and had no choice but to go to school at the mediocre college in my hometown. It was there that I met Yannick and fell in love and learned more about myself and my values than from any other experience in my life.
I'm still at that mediocre college and I won't lie, I miss my big university life. If life had gone as expected, I would be getting ready to graduate in a year with a biology degree, I'd be working in a research lab and be getting ready to apply for grad schools.
But instead, I'm at a humble school, and I am grateful for it. Being here has changed the course of my life. I'm switching my major and my entire life plan from Biology to something else, because it turns out, I don't want to live my life in a research lab. I'm about to go on a mission to serve and teach people. I'm going to a place I would never have dreamed I'd see, to meet people that I will have one chance to help. Through being here I've come to a point in life where my mantra has become, "You don't have to be happy right now, you just have to do what is right."
It's been a rough road to this point, and at times I think of what my life would have been like if I had never come home. It might have been a little less painful, but I would have never met Yannick, I would never have gone to do research in Iowa where I met many wonderful friends, and I would not be at the point in my life where I am excited to go to a foreign place to teach God's word. Even though I'm not an actress, teacher, mom or biologist, I wouldn't go back one minute. I am grateful for the experiences I've had and I'm grateful to God and all the people that have come into my life in the past 18 months. I've changed, I've grown up a bit, and I like the person I'm becoming.
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