A New Normal

I need to find it. The back room/guest room/storage room's bookcase is filled with books from friends and dvds from my parents' house. At the bottom of the bookshelf, I see them: binders full of letters from my mission. Every letter that was ever written to me, most of the emails ever sent, are stuffed in those binders. I pull them out. Where do I begin? I flip page after page, letter after letter, until I realize that the words spoken at my setting apart, the words my mom had typed out for me to read, the words I am looking for, would most likely be in an envelope, and if it's in an envelope, it would be in one of the binders' pockets. So I start looking. Flip flip... pull pull... "Not that one..." Next binder. Flip flip... pull pull... "No..."  Last binder. Flip...  Something catches my eye. Not an envelope. An email that has been printed. On it says, "How is my precious girl?" It's an email from Dad. I can't he

To others, the land would be nothing less of desolate. Sage brush infest the ground, growing up to a man's knee, as far as the eye can see. When the wind blows, the dust of the ground lifts up, sometimes circling in the air, a cloud on the ground that one can walk through. Surrounding this land, mountains stand majestically, protecting anything from coming out, and even more importantly, keeping anything from coming in. Arco, Idaho. Little Loss River. The land of desolate, a place where not many would come. And it is perfect for us. The sun bares down on us as we look up, eyes covered by our solar glasses, all of us excited. We are about to experience a natural phenomenon- a solar eclipse. The kids are excited, exclaiming, "Look! Can you see! WHOA!" To the naked eye, it appears to be just the sun, yet with the glasses, we see the reality- the moon slowly but surely covering the sun. To me, it's a juxtaposition-the lesser light covering the greater. We sit, antic

My heart stopped pounding and mellowed out at the words, "Please know that we are indeed grateful for your work, but we have no positions open at the moment." This was it: the moment of truth. The truth was, I didn't make it. The truth was, even though I had worked hard and done what I could, in the end, this job wasn't in the plan. The tears didn't come initially. In fact, my first thought was honestly, "Ok. Well, that didn't work out. Just gotta think of a new plan! Hopefully, Jake will get his position, and that will work out better anyways." No, those tears didn't come until about an hour or so later, when the negativity started to fill my head. You aren't good enough. You suck.  All those hours of preparation, and this is what you get? You failed. Those thoughts filled my head for the rest of the day into the next, while I was preparing to go to work for a job that in the end, I wouldn't have in about a month. Those