it's about that time again.

dear future hubby,

(and you thought these letters had ceased. good one.)

i'm not sure what to say to you today. maybe just a few little things.
maybe centered on a song.
yes. that. let's just talk about a song.
i first heard this song soon after arriving home from ukraine.
(because. it didn't exist prior to july 18, 2012. i would have known. #lovemesomemumford)
on pandora. as i was going to sleep.
и. я поразилась.
how do you say that in english--i was struck by it? it struck me?
it was striking. because it seemed so perfect.
perfect for describing the state i was in. the me after my mission.
perfect for a hope of the someday i'll find in you.

you saw my pain washed out in the rain.

broken glass, saw the blood run from my veins.

but you saw no fault, no cracks in my heart.

and you knelt beside my hope torn apart.

but the ghosts that we knew will flicker from view.

we'll live a long life.

so give me hope in the darkness, that i will see the light.

cause oh that gave me such a fright.

but i will hold as long as you like,

just promise me we'll be alright.

so lead me back, turn south from that place.

and close my eyes to my recent disgrace.

cause you know my call

and we'll share my all.

and our children come and they will hear me roar.

so give me hope in the darkness that i will see the light.

cause oh that gave me such a fright.

but i will hold as long as you like,

just promise me we'll be alright.

but hold me still.

bury my heart on the coals.

hold me still.

bury my heart next to yours.

so give me hope in the darkness,

that i will see the light.

cause oh that gave me such a fright.

but i will hold on with all of my might,

just promise me we'll be alright.

the ghosts that we knew made us black and all blue,

but we'll live a long life.

and the ghosts that we knew will flicker from view

and we'll live a long life.

ghosts that we knew, mumford and sons

i can't say more. because the words themselves say it. cause the thing is. i've seen my share of ghosts. and maybe i have more demons than the average human, especially around these parts. but. i think. maybe. you'll understand that. not in an i'm-so-selfish-and-needy way. just in a. this-is-who-i-am way. and you'll understand. and ultimately, all those ghosts will flicker. we'll live a long life. give me hope in the darkness that i will see the light. you know my call.
sometimes i read some of these older letters to you, and my former self of the past a little bit makes me want to gag. please say i've changed from that time. i have.
but. the principles are still true. simplicity. love. light. balance.
our life is not so far away now. i mean, maybe that's a silly assumption.
but. just a suggestion from the universe.
and. you know what? i'm ready.
ready for a new life.

words with and by the means of love,
эмили [eh-me-lee]

ps. i think i will call you муж [muzh]. because i just love the way it sounds. договорились.

where are you, punkin?

in ukraine's honor. ukrainian-flag cadbury eggs.

because after being together 24/7 for 13 weeks

in the winter hunger games death arena that is being a sister in ukraine,

we still don't hate each other.

the fire and the raven.

and if we're on a bus of other obligations and things to do,

somehow we still end up sitting together by the end.

metaphor.

"you'd think that living together would mean emily and i text and talk less. buuuut no." --jillian

#mostskill-balancedcompanionshipieverhad #marriedistheonlywordtocomeclosetodescribingourrelationship

(and if you were going to judge the hashtags. go ahead and stop it right there. i judge myself.)

the day we discovered we didn't know the word for paradise.

"рай? не знаете? РАЙ. як ви не знаєте? рай! РАЙ."

наташа.

december 31, 2012 / 7:24 am. / kholodnaya gora, kharkov, ukraine.
the letters in the distance near the sunrise? our grocery store, digma.

(approximately) one year later:

"right, natasha. why would we know the word for paradise when we were in hell?"

sister bull.

the day she said that is the day we learned.

рай: the russian and ukrainian word. for paradise.

an observation.

i just have a little observation to make.
which is to say, something about myself that i've discovered.

i. am not good at developing or nurturing anything that lasts a long time.
relationships with people. anything. i'm always subconsciously assuming i won't be staying long.
that there's no long-term connection to be made.
what does that even look like on a day-to-day basis?
i'm always restless, because i've been trained to be that way.
trained that things don't last.
trained that things will change.
because things always change. so. i have a hard time making attachments.
i have a hard time making attachments because sometimes it's hard for me to see the value in them.
like, i know there is value. i know it's the center of human life.
but.
sometimes it's just a little hard for me.
especially ever since ukraine.

i see it everywhere. in the way i view everything.
my attachment--or rather, lack thereof--with members in romania. or in ukraine.
with anyone there, really. beyond those individuals that i select out.
with people from high school or people from college.
i never really fully give myself to most of them.
because i don't really fully trust any of them.
because. what does that look like?
i don't know.
so i'm a friendly delightful soul, but never really attach.

because. transfers are the inevitable end.
one transfer or another. there's always an inevitable end.
as is true in real life. the transfers of life.

maybe i should work on that.
maybe i won't.

that time of year.

the time of year of significant events to be remembered.

march 23, 2012. s-e-d.
back in the day when all three of us lived in the same state.

twenty-six years ago today, grandpa hales passed away.

two years ago today, i entered the fulness of the temple for the first time.

one year ago today, hannah went through the temple for the first time.

how fitting that roommate emily went through for the first time yesterday.

what a lovely commemoration.

here's to significant events. events to remember.

to growing up. landmarks.

grandpa hales's 'paydays,' as they say he called them.

to temples.

healing.

found here.

i want this painting.

because it is perfect.

pinterestfind.

artsy art.

happens.

stitching hearts.

love is the stitches, holding people listening as change takes place.

love and healing.

hearts.

как твоё сердце?

(how's your heart?)

следуй сердцу своему.

(follow your heart.)

three. is a magic number.

i had to get my car registration renewed the other day.

so in the middle of the day on a tuesday in march,

i found myself in an empty auto shop.

car registration. renewal.

three. i've been home three months today. a number that is simultaneously three days and three years to me.

that's the way the world turns.

and my head told my heart,

'let love grow.'

and my heart told my head,

'this time no, this time no.'

remember spring swaps snow for leaves.

you'll be happy and wholesome again.

when the city clears and sun ascends.

winter winds, mumford and sons.

spring is my time of year, you know. i adore the process found within spring and fall, but most especially the coming to life of spring. last year as life began to come again in ukraine after a long, cold winter, i would always note it and say, "маленькая жизнь." ['little life.'] my companion sometimes thought me crazy, but eventually found it endearing. (or at least that's what i tell myself.) the signs of life after a time of so much death, figuratively speaking.

i always say three is a magic number. three weeks for adjustment to something new. three months for it to become a part of you. three months in romania, and i could have stayed there forever. three months home from ukraine, and it feels like a distant dream. life here, is normal life. different, and yet the same as what it was before my mission.

during my last transfer, i got an email from jillian (otherwise known as sis.bull) right after she got home. about. how. so much is just the same. except. she was different. her reaction was different. and. well. that's the difference of a mission. not the world, of course. but instead yourself. you are different. your reaction to situations is different. your reaction to people is different. maybe that's a gross overestimation. but. my reactions are different. my reactions to people are different. and, above all, i am different.

march. is my month of renewal. with this marking of three months. i feel. i feel life again. something within the sunshine. something coming, though i'm not sure what. even if maybe that something is just the longer days of steady sunshine.

people always ask me, 'have you adjusted yet?'

well, i for one don't know exactly what on earth adjusted is supposed to mean.

but i do know. that. if adjusted is feeling heavy dust or snowpiles be gradually blown off your soul, hating people less, being less (relatively) triggered by things related to missions or sister missionaries, no longer the newest home from your mission, and the beginnings of starting a new life--then yes. yes i'm adjusted.

but, i don't think it's a perfective verb so much as a lifelong gerund--adjusting.

i'm adjusting. all of us. everyday. we are adjusting. to everything that surrounds.

and maybe, just maybe, that's the beauty of life itself.

the consistency of change and the wonder in watching the creation and development of new life.

i started over a lot on my mission.

white-washed a lot. (mission lingo-which is to say, entered areas which neither i nor my companion were even remotely familiar with.) to say nothing of all the times i walked into absolutely nothing or an area that was absolutely dead or an area that hadn't had missionaries in quite some time. sometimes together with the whitewashing, sometimes not. not to mention much of those occasions were combined as well with being trained, being real young with a companion that's real young, or training.

so, like. #immaboss

but, my point is not to brag. (pride.) my point? nearing on the end (when i had once again found myself in the midst of entering nothing), megan beth in an email once said to me, 'maybe that's why you keep coming into areas with nothing. so that you can learn how to build. and use these lessons when you're home (...) but i do think god lets us breathe sometimes before moving on to the next challenge.'

building. moving. shaking. but. it's been taken all out of me. i don't have it in me anymore. i think i'm supposed to be breathing after 18 months that were more than a lifetime-worth of adventures and experiences, joys and heartbreaks, scares and thrills.

i think i've had enough adventures for awhile.

three. the worst of the coming home battles are in the past, you could say. conquered, слава богу.

so here's to breathing the sun into my bones.

happy and wholesome again, when the city clears and sun ascends.

breathe: in, out; in, out. this is how we stay alive.

spring is good for the soul. it renews her. refreshes her. revitalizes her.

only fitting that my three months lands on the first day of spring.

welcome, spring.

welcome home.

что он проживает в раю.

regina. is russian.

she. is talented.

this song. is beautiful.

while. the earth still turns.

here are the lyrics in english.

(not the best translation, but such is life.)

here are the lyrics in russian.

first and foremost.

"Time's not what matters - it's you that does.

Become a sun, and then everyone will see you.

A sun must first and foremost be a sun."

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

when i first got home, there wasn't a particular restaurant i just had to go to first thing.

there wasn't a song i needed to listen to, or a movie i was dying to watch.

sixty-seven.
now, eighty-five.
i've been home for eighty-five days.
at sixty-seven. that's when i started to know. that's when hope was born within me again.
hope dawning bright as i looked into the setting sun.
that's when i really knew.

i'm okay. it'll all work out. it really all will.

i am a sun. in cold mountain was the first time a woman on the street called me солнышка. (solnichka.) sunshine. a woman with black hair that we talked to briefly before she hopped on a passing marshrutka (similar to a bus) on an absolutely frigid winter morning, made even colder by the rare clear sky that appeared and morning sunshine that was utterly without warmth. from then on. i delighted when people would call me sun. sunshine. any derivative. and then. someone started specially calling sister andrade solnichka. daughters leave legacies. especially in ukraine. all of my trainees are weird combinations of parts of me, peculiar things that set them apart as mine and carrying the legacy of the line we're in. and that was one of hers: solnichka.
but. a sun. first and foremost, you must let yourself be a sun. then everyone will see or understand.
this probably doesn't make sense in words the way it does in my soul.

i don't know what personalities of recently returned missionaries mean. the things that are hard for you or aren't hard for you. the things that make for big adjustments vs. the things that seem like no big deal at all. and the thing is. in most cases, they are absolutely no indicator of the kind of missionary someone was. it's just. some things phase some, others get phased by other things. in the midst of it you think:
i'm dying to go to cafe rio. i just can't wait to have american ice cream. zupas. that's what i'll eat first. this place. take me there first straight from the airport. i'm dying to see this movie that came out just after i left. i can't wait to hear about this and this.
that's how missionaries think. but then. when the real moment comes? it's nothing like that. nothing like what you imagine in your head. by the time you really get there, you've long since forgotten about those things. they've long ago turned relatively unimportant. for me, anyway. they all became spare change. unimportant.
instead. i was ready to collapse from exhaustion and trauma.
instead. i was left emptied out and unsure of what to make of the place i ended up in.
instead. i was left, figuratively speaking, staring blankly in a mirror as the world span madly on.
that's what coming home meant. for me.

i don't feel like a 'return missionary.' i feel like i served a mission. in ukraine.
and now i am not in ukraine.
i feel like there are millions of secrets in my soul. millions of pieces, that have no place to be let out. millions of portions that few can understand, or even have patience for caring about. millions that don't have a way to be explained. they just. are as they are. pieces of me that result from millions of combined moments.
starting with. i don't miss my mission. my mission was over and was supposed to be over. i miss moments. i miss people. i miss the essence of what ukraine is. the essence of people. (i miss music mondays of cold mountain in which the ukrainian national anthem interrupted our studies from the military training ground across the street from our apartment.) i miss little things like lessons with people i love. first lessons that go well. teaching, in general. good, meaningful conversations with strangers. moments of light, moments of change. companions (i wish i could go back to being companions with some people even though it's real life this time. because i just miss their presence. strange? probably.) i miss the special kind of friendship that is created and for some reason can exist only in that foreign and isolated intensified arena of living.
to name a few.
and. i won't talk about the other aspects. not now, anyway.

i don't know what i'm trying to say exactly.
but maybe that's just it. i'm not trying to say anything specifically.

just that. a sun must always first and foremost be a sun.
time does not matter. normalcy comes to each in their own time and way.
i love spring. spring is mine.
if you were to describe me within the bonds of weather condition,
it would be a sunny spring day with a wind blowing in various strengths throughout the day.
warm, but a slight chill within the refreshing breeze.
a day that everyone would deem as wonderful, refreshed after the grey of winter.
something like that.

russian literature. the russian soul.
far too underestimated in this world for their brilliance.
(especially dostoevsky and tolstoy. i'm obsessed with them as of late.)
god bless them. every one. especially today.

just a little stream of consciousness.

i need to write more.

but i wouldn't know where to begin.

i have collections of words gathered all over many different venues.

nothing concrete or consolidated.

a metaphor for my life.

sometimes you're the activities co-chair.

so sometimes your cart looks like this, for example.

large quantity of just a few items. happens.

judgers gonna judge.

learning patience.

i hate event planning.

nuclear engineers and medievalists.

i strongly approve of this.

that is all.

the sunshine is calling. i must breathe it into my bones.

hashtag.

shared dessert.

#married

so glad jilly bean has come back home.

"what a dull place the world would be if there were no fools. here we are, two intelligent men, who know you can argue eternally about everything under the sun, so we don't argue. we know practically all the other's innermost thoughts. with us a single word speaks volumes. we see through the triple outer husk to the kernel of our emotions. we find sad things funny and funny things sad, though in fact we're pretty indifferent to everything except ourselves. "

mikhail lermontov, a hero of our time

so, i mean. it's a little bit true.

raven and fire.

i have good roommates.

they (we) are going places.

something good is in the air.

on wings of spring, weakly threatened by a day of snow.

i love spring.

it makes everything feel possible.

hello there, spring.

stop and stay awhile.

two years of knowing.

this happened two years ago today.

two years since being reminded of something i had in some part of me always known:

that ukraine is part of my eternal identity.

two very full and empty years of every kind of everything.

maybe i'll write more about her later. maybe i won't.

my selfie the day my call came.

i'm wearing the same sweater right now.

unintentionally.

the same thing happened on the day i entered the mtc and my one year mark on a mission.

or my first and last zone conference.

unintentionally. wearing the same thing.

you could probably analyze something in that.

i don't have the brain capacity to do so.

(i think i have ptsd.)

a story that's never been told. stand up for your right.

слушаю ветер.

"i listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul.

where i'll end up, well i think only god really knows.

...

i listen to my words, but they fall far below.

i let my music take me where my heart wants to go."

the wind, cat stevens

yesterday someone gave me a pinwheel.

it seemed metaphorical for my life.

i listen to the wind of my soul.

i'm restless like the wind.

(sister andrade appropriately named me a sappy hippie.)

where i'll end up?

only god really knows.

i had a knowing today.

a knowing that i'll get into grad school.

that it'll all work out.

and. i'll be a speech pathologist. err sumfing.

a dang good one.

something that advocates people.

something that opens people right up and allows them to better be.

so that they can become 'a dang good one' at whatever they're becoming too.

"whoever you are, be a good one."

thanks, abe.

to fight, to fight, to fight.

"it's the moment of truth, and the moment to lie,

the moment to live and the moment to die,

the moment to fight, the moment to fight,

to fight, to fight, to fight!

to the right, to the left

we will fight to the death!

to the edge of the earth

it's a brave new world

from the last to the first.

...

i do believe in the light, 

raise your hands into the sky.

the fight is done, the war is won.

lift your hands toward the sun."

'this is war.' 30 seconds to mars

my country is breaking. my people are breaking.

people keep asking me about ukraine. what i think of it all.

if they're asking, it means they're caring.

most effective way to get your country on the front cover

of every major news organization for months in a row? revolution.

the english translation for the title of the ukrainian national anthem is, 'ukraine has not yet died.' [the anthem that rang out every monday morning from the military compound across the street on cold mountain. music mondays.] only fitting, for a nation that has been beaten and thrashed from the right to the left and throughout its entire history. her glory has not yet died. слава украине. they've given everything.

in discussions of the casualties of world war two, it's often mentioned that the soviet union suffered losses of over twenty million lives. many fail to recognize, though, that nearly seven million of those lives came from a relatively small portion of that vast republic - ukraine.

ukraine has been beaten, abused, and yet they rise again. revolution. an unscripted revolution is what you could call current circumstances. war is a dirty business. particularly in the midst of what is threatening to be a simultaneous civil war and war with their former abusive father figure. i don't condone violence, but i also ardently oppose humans being treated as personified doormats by fellow humans. this is their moment of truth. this is where they reach their hands toward the sun - fighting against years of oppression, years of corruption, and years of suffering. fighting for something to change. fighting for a voice.

and.

i want them to fight.

to fight, to fight, to fight!

it's a brave new world.

i do believe in the light.

to the people.

i much prefer time with people.
getting to know. associating with. talking.
with good eggs. good people.
conversations with strangers.
but.
it's a shame university doesn't give much of any time for that.
instead time must be spent avoiding the looming threat of drowning in academics.

the hanging balance, that has no one right answer.
people are always more important, i always used to say.
(i don't know what that looks like.)

so sometimes i choose people.
i choose them carefully, analytically, methodically.




i'm still recovering from my acquired guilt complex.

because jeffrey always knows best.

15 minutes you won't regret.

in which elder holland essentially summarizes

some of the grandest personal studies of my mission.

he always knows best.

moses 7.

the god who weeps.

the shift. the unexpected.

i love crime and punishment because of the unexpected epilogue. a true miracle, just like the raising of lazarus. there is still suffering to be paid, but there is also hope in that suffering. the ability of love to truly change a person. call it love, call it Christ, call it the love of God. every kind of love ultimately leads back to Christ, and therefore also the Father. because God is love. what does the Savior look like? He looks like love. above all, His chief and defining characteristic is charity. i always did say charity was the most important Christlike attribute. because it leads to and supports everything else.

i love the shift in crime and punishment because it gives hope to even the most hopeless and allows for expectation in the utterly unexpected. in the silly children’s movie, “mr. magorium’s wonder emporium,” the eccentric mr. magorium is won over and hires the accountant when he offers a timidly firm, “anything is possible, sir.” then mr. magorium truly knows: “you’re just the man we need.” anything is possible. “with God, all things are possible” (luke 1:37). sometimes i think we too-frequently forget the power of God - myself included. we forget about His ability to give manna in the wilderness, give sight to the blind, voice to the mute, and life to the lifeless. the power of God unto salvation. does the power of God in our lives disappear because He refuses and steps away from us, or because we cease to recognize and invite that influence and power into our lives? i would venture the latter.

love is what truly redeems raskolnikov because it provides him with a safe place to lay down his heavy heart. the love is there waiting for him long before he chooses to recognize it, let alone accept it in place of being baffled and annoyed by it. love gives an infinite place to rest his weary head - an infinite source of life.

“this is the story of a bird with no wings, certain that it could fly.

sailing on love into the headwinds, forcing its way by and by.

what do we name it? HOPE is the right word.

HOPE is the greatest, most beautiful bird in the sky.”

idina menzel, hope

even the farthest man from light can always make it back from the darkness, but only if he allows himself that. peace is a choice, as is the acceptance of love and the reception of spiritual power. and so, in the end, it always seems to come back to choice: agency, that ladder to the stars.

the raising of lazarus, carl bloch.

only a path. enchanted paths.

"At concerts, for me, the orchestra was like a painter. It flooded me with all the colors of the rainbow. If the violin came in by itself, i was suddenly filled with gold and fire, and with red so bright that i could not remember having seen it on any object. When it was the oboe's turn, a clear green ran all through me, so cool that I seemed to feel the breath of night. I visited the land of music. I rested my eyes on every one of its scenes. I loved it till it caught my breath. But I saw music too much to be able to speak its language. My own language was the language of shapes.

Strange chemistry, the chemistry which changed a symphony into moral purpose, an adagio into a poem, a concerto into a walk, attaching words to pictures and pictures to words, daubing the world with colors, and finally making the human voice into the most beautiful of all instruments!

With Jean, who was more of a musician than I, I had long arguments on this subject.  All of them ended with an exciting discovery, and it was always the same one: that there is nothing in the world which cannot be replaced with something else; that sounds and colors are being exchanged endlessly, like the air we breathe and the life it gives us; that nothing is ever isolated or lost; that everything comes from God and returns to God along all the roadways of the world; and that the most beautiful music is still only a path. Yet there are enchanted paths, and those which bear the names of Vivaldi, Beethoven and Ravel went further, I knew, than any roads on earth."

Jacques Lusseyran, And There Was Light

volcanoes in the soul.

the thing about writing, is that i can't do it until i'm ready.

i had a companion once - sister andrade. she'd do this thing, where she'd become obsessed with or bothered by some idea or some something. and she'd go silent for days. (in a quite literal sense - we were in a threesome, so it made things more balanced and excusable.) you can imagine my consternation at the beginning of that time together--in which she joined us and this started to take place. but then i learned. i learned her pattern. that that's what she needed, and she didn't quite know how to respond. she wouldn't talk about it. so we left her. and then. then the volcano in her soul would erupt when it was sufficiently ready. she knew this wouldn't work with a year and a half of companions ahead of her that typically would not be a threesome. she recognized that and we had our moments of negotiation and learning. solnichka (sis.andrade) came a long way that transfer. my point is this. i soon realized and learned and saw within her - she'll talk when she's ready. if she trusts you, she will come to you and speak when she's ready. she came to trust me. she came to love me. and so i knew she'd come to me when she was ready. and trying to force the process? well that just wouldn't do any good at all.

[but that's one of the things i loved most about her. her stubbornness. her refusal to give herself to something until she'd fully reconciled herself within it. and come to a truce with it. but once she hit that point? she gives all of herself. there's no one better. she throws her heart and every piece of her soul into becoming. into being the best. draws flowcharts and goes all out in seeking to understand. refuses to say 'i love you' or even, 'i like you' until she really actually means it. that's what i love about sister andrade.]

sometimes, there are volcanoes waiting to erupt inside my soul. volcanoes of ideas, thoughts, feelings. not always a pompeii kind of volcano of dark, billowing, destructive balls of fire. but sometimes just the volcano out in the middle of the ocean somewhere that no one even really knows about. a harmless kind, that's just seeking to ultimately erupt so that it can get on with stiffening into a future mountain. mountains weren't always mountains, you know.

taken this day.

and so.

the thing about writing, is that i can't do it until i'm ready.

but in the meantime, speaking of volcanoes.

because who doesn't love geeking out

to national geographic cool things about the world?