I Hope They Call Me On A Mission!

I think I deserve some sort of award for my amazing accomplishment of posting absolutely NOTHING for the full month of September.

Here’s the thing, y’all. Life is messy. And I don’t mean tidy-it-up-real-quick-so-no-one-notices messy. I mean the kind of messy that’s impossible to miss. I mean let’s-call-TLC-because-we’ve-got-a-hoarder messy.

Love troubles, school troubles, you name it. I’ve been a disaster this semester.

I’ve been feeling lost. Like I’m not where I’m supposed to be or doing what I should be doing. I’ve agonized night after night after night that I’m not the girl I used to be. And that’s a bummer because I LOVED that girl. She was self-assured, happy, and faithful.

I wrestled for a while with my testimony. It started to flicker over the summer because I was not properly feeding it. Over the past couple of weeks, though, I’ve felt it grow strong again. I can’t explain why. I guess it’s just that I started caring again and I started working for it again.

And little-but-significant things have been happening to me since March, all building up to a decision I made this weekend.

I want to serve a full-time mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

What does this mean? Well, it means that for eighteen full months I will devote my life to sharing the Gospel and serving others in order to serve the Lord. I will send in my paperwork soon and receive an assignment that could be almost anywhere in the world, speaking nearly any language. I will spend time in a Missionary Training Center learning how to be an effective missionary, and then I will be put on a plane and flown to my mission!

In the General Conference of the Church this weekend, the prophet Thomas S. Monson announced that sister missionaries may now serve as young as 19 (instead of the former age requirement for women, which was 21). This is a huge deal for many girls who hesitate about serving because the timing is difficult or because they feel they should get married instead…as for me, I would have been able to serve in June anyway, but I honestly did not feel the inclination for a long time. I kept thinking about it and quickly pushing the thought away out of fear. Eighteen months is a long time, after all. And I have a life here in Provo, a very full life.

But when President Monson made the announcement, I felt a surge of the Spirit telling me that not only was this divine revelation for the whole Church, it was also a revelation meant just for me. It was the answer to my prayers.

I called my parents and discussed it with them, who assured me they feel like it’s a great decision.

Nothing has been carved in stone just yet, but I have a meeting with my bishop next Saturday and I feel pretty durn sure about this decision. It’s frightening, but I also feel an incredible peace when I think about going forth to serve.

I’ll keep you posted!

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It’s funny, to me, who notices certain things.

This week was the first of the new semester. It’s been surprisingly long and difficult. I usually love starting classes again, but for some reason this time around I’ve struggled with anxiety, disappointment, and frustration.

So this has been a long week.

Yesterday at work my supervisor walked over to my desk. “How are you today?” she asked.

I unconsciously took a deep breath and exhaled as I said, “I’m gooooood.”

“Sounds like you’re good because it’s almost the end of a long week,” she observed.

“Yeah,” I said sheepishly.

“And you’re turning bright red now,” she said, “So I guess I’m right!”

Of course I blushed even more then. It startled me that someone could see through me that clearly. Someone I see every day at work, sure, but hardly really know. It reminded me of an encounter I had about three years ago in high school.

I’d been having a hard day. I don’t remember why, but I’m sure it had something to do with a lovesick heart and the feeling that no one could possibly understand how incredibly difficult my life was. Yes, I was sometimes a little melodramatic in high school. I still am.

Anyway, I went to German class and sat in my assigned seat. Normally in German class I was animated and carefree. Today I was not. All I wanted was for the world to know how much my life sucked, but I didn’t want to have to tell everyone. Kind of a dilemma.

Throughout most of the class no one paid me any attention. So I was abnormally quiet today, so what? No one cared to hear about my woes. I’d be back to my normal self tomorrow most likely.

But one boy took notice. His name was Brandon. Brandon and I were not exactly friends. We had friends in common, and we respected each other, but we were very different people. I guess I kind of thought of him as dangerous because I knew some of the things he liked to do. And I judged him sometimes. But I think Brandon was, at his core, a nice guy.

Brandon turned to me during a quiet moment of the lesson. “Kelsey,” he said, “Are you okay?”

It caught me completely off guard. Of all the people in the world who might have noticed that something was wrong, I would have thought Brandon would be the last. And no, I was not about to tell him right there in the middle of German 2 that I thought my whole world was falling apart because of Factors X, Y, and Z – but hearing him say those words and show that concern for me, someone he barely knew and someone who did not approve of all his antics, it just made everything feel so much more bearable.

I want to try to be one of those people. I want to notice when others seem to be down and I want to be the one who tries to lift them back up. Just showing the slightest amount of concern can make a huge difference on another person’s day.

Have you ever had similar encounters? How did it feel to know that someone really cared?

How To Write a Personal Manifesto

 

I’ve felt very much lately that my life has become a huge knot of problems and anxieties and concerns – with me standing in the center of it, trying to get free.

That’s not an uncommon feeling for me. I, like most people, go through phases: first everything is perfectly aligned, then one thing falls apart, then another and another, and there I am in the mess. But the next phase in the cycle is cleaning up that mess.

And that’s what I’m working on now.

Last week I made a big step in that direction. I wrote (and published on this very blog) a thorough personal manifesto which covers all the main aspects of my life and details my goals for happy living.

I highly recommend this. The process was more involved and difficult than I expected, but within a couple of hours I had pounded out a document that makes me pretty proud.

A personal manifesto declares one’s intents to live well – according to whatever one’s beliefs or aspirations may be.

If you would like to straighten out a messy/confusing life, here’s a brief overview of how I went about creating my own personal manifesto:

1. Identify a few overarching themes/areas of your life. For example, I chose LIFE, LOVE, and FAITH.
2. Under each of these themes, take some time to thoughtfully outline the vital facts (or perhaps doctrines, if you will) which guide your attitude concerning them.
3. Break down the doctrines by then explaining what you will or will not do because of what you believe.

Peruse my own personal manifesto to better understand what I mean. And of course there are other ways to do it. But I am a list-oriented person and for me, this method worked best.

Do you have other ideas for methods of writing a personal manifesto? Please share in the comments below!

Related articles

• Why Everyone Should Write a Manifesto (lifehack.org)
• My Personal Manifesto (thehappinesscomplex.wordpress.com)
• Permission to Quit: My Inspired Living Manifesto (beingisaverb.com)