A Different Person

Spurred by recent events, I felt a need to write this.

I am not the same person that I used to be. In fact, I almost see my past as a totally different lifetime. How far distant? Not all that much. I might look the same, but truly I feel that I am almost unrecognizable from who I was before.

Since moving out to Idaho I have felt my priorities completely change. Why am I doing so well in school (currently carrying a 3.99 GPA while having two kids?) because my focus has changed.

I am not perfect. Actually I am not doing anything half as well as I would like. But Jon and I discussed on the way home from church yesterday how we define our own success--thanks to a great Sunday school lesson--and we are closer now than we ever have been before.

Sometimes I think about sliding back into old habits. Giving up. Not caring. Why am I working so hard? Why did I move away from all my friends and family? Why am I trying to make friends here and learn names and bother with studying when it means sacrificing so much else (and sometimes including pleasures that I once thought were SO important?)

Well, I think it's because I've truly had a change of heart, and I only see things getting better. From here the world looks just like it should be. And even though I may have had that same thought at various times in the past, I can see now that my logic was flawed.

There is nowhere else I would rather be. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with physical location. As I told my dear sweet cousin on the phone this morning, I never expected such obvious and wonderful change to happen so fast. Most of it has been inside.

I have never felt such a true turning of my heart to the way I should truly be facing, and that is toward Christ. I wouldn't attribute it all to this school. Although I love attending BYU-I, I know that the experiences I'm having here would not affect me the way that they have unless I had been prepared for it to do so. Many years ago I would NOT have enjoyed a CES campus. Now, my life will be forever changed because of it.

Thank you to everyone who has loved and supported us in this transition, and to everyone who still calls and texts and shares with us their lives and calls us their friends :) We love you.