Welcome to the life of a future missionary.
I don't mean to discourage anybody, but it's not really all that glamorous emotionally and if somebody had told me that the emotions would be this complicated and hard... well, it wouldn't change my desire to serve a mission, but I probably would have made a bit of a face and creased my eyebrows.
Today specifically has been a 'woe is me' kind of day. You see, today is two weeks exactly until I report to the Chile MTC; but a fortnight! And today has also been one of my more serious I-am-going-to-miss-literally-everything-so-much days. Because right now I feel like I'm going to miss everything. Of course, I will miss a lot of things, but I'm pretty sure these feelings dissipate a little bit after you're in a foreign country working nonstop all day in a language you are still learning to speak, but right now, in the comfort of my home, surrounded by the things I'll miss, I've begun to prematurely miss everything.
Which is a totally lame feeling; 0/10, would definitely not recommend.
Don't be fooled though, not every day is like this. There are so many good days when I am beyond excited to serve a mission!
If I were to make a scale to explain my daily excitement level for going to serve my mission in Chile, it would probably be kind of like a scale of one to ten (one being the most and ten being the least) and would look something like this:
1: spreading the good word to everybody that will listen
2: wanderlust
3: empanadas and completos
4: Spanish language
5: currency exchange
6: limited contact with family and friends
7: stray dogs
8: the metro
9: Santiago airport
10: Chilean recluse spiders
I can confidently say that today is a number ten. I've actually had the image of a kaleidoscope of spider fangs constantly spinning in the back of my mind because golly gee I do not want to meet one of those things but as would only seem right on a day like today, chances are high that I will.
I'm not even sure if I can come up with any way to turn this post upside down and make it a happy thing again. It's just one of those days and, to be quite honest, I am not ashamed to feel this way. I am a human and am therefore subject to human emotions and unfortunately, human emotions don't always (and by that I mean very rarely) make any sense at all.
Earlier today I was watching the news with my mom, perfectly fine, and I explained that I was feeling a little 'meh' and hadn't gotten a lot of sleep last night and had a couple bad dreams. She said, "Well, why don't you go take a hot shower?" and then I started crying. I don't know why, I just started crying. Maybe my body subconsciously took that as a cue to start showering myself in hot tears? Maybe because sometimes it feels better to cry than to say or do anything? I don't know. But that's about when I started feeling the Lesley Gore coming on because sometimes you just need to cry.
This is my party after all and even though a mission is a wonderful thing that will bring joy to many people (including myself), I'll cry about it if I want to thank you very much.
I don't really know where this is going anymore, let's be real. I'm tired and I want this post to be over.
I'll just leave you with this, a very similar idea to my last post. Sometimes it's just hard to be a person. As my mother reminded me sometime this last week, even the Savior, who was perfect, was also human: "And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt," (Matthew 26:39). Even Jesus himself had a moment of just - wow; this stuff is really hard and I don't think I want to do it anymore if I don't have to.
I think that specifically is a big part of his Atonement for us. We don't have to always want to do it; we don't have to always want to hear that it's going to be okay or that it is okay or even be remotely near the word 'okay.' He was perfect so we don't have to be. As I've said before, all we can do is our best. He'll make up for the rest. I know that this is true and testify of it in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Phew, maybe that made up for a bit of all this negativity. I promise (very loosely and with fingers crossed behind my back) that I will be more positive next week. Thank you to everybody that reads these silly things; I hope they improve your lives in one way or another.
Until we meet again,
Elizabeth Schomburg
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