Putting Together the Pieces

Today I got out a giant umbrella and walked with Luke to his bus stop. There were giant white snowflakes falling all around us and I imagined how warm and cozy the bus must feel for him as he got on board. I caught a perfect view of him out one of the many windows as the bus drove by me, walking back to the house, and I smiled my biggest smile and waved my happiest wave. I thought about how it won’t be long before I’ll wish for moments like that back. I thought about how fast time goes.
I used to sit on the tiny balcony of an apartment Ryan and I lived in when our oldest was a toddler and the next was a baby. We had lived there for a couple of years and we didn’t mind the daydream of moving on, owning a home, feeling financially secure. But I remember, perfectly, sitting out on that balcony, looking past the generic, colorful playground equipment, past the shared swimming pool, to a barrier of other tall apartment buildings all filled with young couples like us and thinking, “One day, this view will be a distant memory. It is so familiar now. It’s all I know, all I can imagine, but one day I’ll never lay eyes on it again.”
I remember last Christmas like it was yesterday. It does not seem like a year ago. Not a whole year since I hid Alli’s first cell phone away in my sock drawer, anxiously awaiting Christmas morning. Not a whole year since I turned down desserts and exercised feverishly so I could feel good about myself while Christmasing with my family and then ate all through Christmas break and gained it all back.
I teach my kids the same little songs and actions that my Mom taught me when I was little and I can still hear the echo of her voice when she taught me. I can still feel the warm sun on my face, still feel the pavement under my feet as we walked to the local library, singing with her all the way there and back.
That’s how short this life is.
It’s comforting in a way, focusing on and lamenting over scales, clocks, money and technology. Little things. Fleeting things. However, in the moments when you have that out of time experience, when you stand out in the gently falling snow and usher your kindergartner onto the school bus and watch him smile and wave goodbye, you just want to wrap your arms around the people you love and make sure they’re happy and taken care of. You just want to wrap all of your memories up in the little antique doilies you got from your Great Grandma and tuck them away in a hope chest that smells clean and old at the same time and keep them forever safe… and you want to make more.
My Mom is dating someone, and it’s serious. Many of you will be wondering what the story is, so I’ll try to summarize. He was a friend of my Dad’s in high school. They hadn’t stayed in close contact, but he came to visit my Dad once when he got really sick. He also came to my Dad’s funeral. I so appreciated everyone who travelled to come and pay respects to Dad. A few months later, this man’s wife, who had been sick for many years, also passed away. My Mom travelled with friends to the funeral. Later, emails began between my Mom and this man because (and I believe this with all of my heart) no one can understand losing a spouse except for someone who has experienced it. They talked of nothing but their spouses and their grief for months. The emails began to be so healing that phone calls seemed an even better opportunity. By the time they went on their first date (which kind of freaked us out) they were already close and only got closer. There was a shift in relationship, so natural, that my Mom said it felt right.
This is where it starts getting a little tricky for us, the onlookers. This is where a thousand questions, questions you never even thought of asking, come into your mind. Justin, Jeremy, Jordan and I are Monte Gee’s kids, and being like him in many ways, we don’t enter into ANYTHING without thinking it over to the result of at least five headaches and a goodly portion of heartburn. Rest assured, we have taken our feelings and the circumstances apart and put them back together like a jigsaw puzzle, and before it’s over we’ll be able to put the puzzle together blindfolded, our spouses will too.
The pieces of the puzzle are like our daily stresses about scales, clocks, money and technology. Each piece is important. When the puzzle is put together, it’s like the out of time moment I had at the bus stop today. The picture is a man and a woman who have had their hearts broken; who have been through more than most of us can understand. It’s a picture of them finding happiness when they once hoped for only survival. It’s a picture of two families standing behind them in support because life is short, and they just want to wrap their arms around the people they love and make sure they’re happy and taken care of. My mom’s only daughter is in that puzzle, and while she’s still coping with these new ideas, and writing a blog post about them, she’s also wrapping up her memories in little antique doilies and tucking them away in a proverbial hope chest that smells clean and old at the same time, she’s keeping them safe forever… and she’s willing to open her heart and make new ones with new people because there’s still room in her hope chest for that.

My True Love Story

Author's note: I just got my 70th follower! Woot! Woot! And she left an awesome and very flattering comment on last week's post, with a numbered list. ;)Thank you to her and thanks to you all SO much!!!

I Once Was Blind, But Now I Like What I See

Day 2250ish

High school matters. I know they tell you it doesn’t. I know we tell ourselves it doesn’t. It may be the most wanted to be believed lie out there. Even now, as they read these words, people are gasping. They’re averting their eyes. They’re cussing at me. They’re making sure their impressionable teenagers aren’t reading… because high school stinks in a lot of ways, and there’s only one sentence that will get people through it. “High School doesn’t matter.” I understand the kind lie we tell ourselves. There are few ways to escape high school, so the only solace is in the possibility that it doesn’t matter.
Here’s the truth: High School doesn’t matter, as long as you can leave it behind. It’s all up to you, but it isn’t easy. It takes self-discovery, maturity, real confidence, forgiveness and trust. Probably a lot of other near impossible things too.
So instead we tell ourselves that in the future, when everyone goes to college, we are all equal. That it doesn’t matter who you were or what people thought of you. That the playing field is evened out and everyone starts over again. We all want it to be true. Even the most popular kids in school want it to be true because as they grow older, they have to live with the way they treated people. They have to live with the inner doubt, whispering to them that they really aren’t everything that people believed them to be. The ones who weren’t popular, they take that with them too. They hear the echoes of people taunting them or they hear the silence of people ignoring them. We all fight the high school voices as they tell us repeatedly who we are; we all continually try to figure out whether they’re right or not. We all bring it with us.
The High School stars wish they could get back the glory days, the kids that weren’t stars go out with a fervor and try to prove to the world that there’s more to them than people saw in high school, and the girl that got her heart broken… no matter how the boy seems to change, or tries to take it back, well, she can’t quite trust him anymore.
Tonight I have a blind date. Never been on a blind date before. His sister set it up. She’s pretty new in town, so there’s mystery. She’s my friend, but I’m intimidated by her because she is so stand out beautiful and skinny and confident. She’s the kind of girl who definitely has an amazing brother that you’d kill to be set up with.
I’m going to be so confident though, because I’m not that nervous, self-conscious, crying silently in the dark of the audience in the school auditorium because Ryan is singing to another girl on stage at a high school assembly girl anymore. I’m a pageant queen, a college student, an experienced dater, a really good writer of missionaries, a janitor… okay, well the other stuff is really cool. Besides, high school doesn’t matter.
So I’m all glammed up and I’m waiting to be all picked up, but the minutes are ticking by. Five minutes after six o’clock. Ten minutes after 6 o’clock. Eleven minutes. Twelve minutes. How long am I supposed to sit here pretending I’m not nervous for this?!?!? Eighteen minutes. Nineteen minutes. I’ve stopped primping. Stopped pretending that- so what if he’s late, because I was going to be late anyway. I fully intended on it.
Twenty-one minutes. Twenty-two minutes. Should I call his sister? We’re doubling with them. Meeting them somewhere. Meeting each other first. Alone. Driving somewhere, getting a chance to talk. IF he shows up, that is. Twenty-three minutes… and a knock at the door.
I let my self-righteous indignation push the butterflies out of my throat, down deep into my stomach, smooshed way down there where I can barely feel them fluttering around. My parents aren’t the type to have the official meeting of the boy on the first date. My mom is the type to peek out of unseen window corners, while whispering a little prayer. My Dad is the type that, if a boy has so much as caught a glimpse of him or even heard anything about him, it’s more effective than him cleaning his gun in the living room. What a good man he is, but if anyone hurt me, they really would need to be afraid.
So, with no introductions to perform, I am free to glance at my watch and greet him with an, “I wasn’t sure if you were going to make it,” before I raise my chin and move past him out of the front door, and bounce my hair, alluring, and now, untouchable, as I stomp down the front steps.
He’s smiling as he climbs behind the steering wheel, playing it off as though my anger is cute as a button. He’s good looking. Blond hair, a fresh t-shirt, frayed jeans that fit right and don’t try too hard, but no amount of good lookingness can forgive this extreme lateness, because I am so done with cocky boys who think they can make me wait around.
As he reverses out of my driveway, he asks, “So… how has your day been?”
“Pretty good, until the last twenty-three minutes or so,” I say.
“Why is that?” he asks, making nothing easy.
“Uh… because that’s how late you are.”
He’s still wearing that amused smile when he says, “I’m sorry, I lost track of time because I was vacuuming out my truck. I wanted to impress you.”
My head snaps toward him. This bit of flattering honesty is unexpected. I look at the floor, begrudgingly checking the vacuuming job. “Oh. Well, the truck… does… look… good,” I say. Then, because his honesty disarmed me, I disarm him right back with some of my own. “And… you smell good,” I say. Boy am I a sucker for men’s cologne. I’d almost grab a stranger who walked past in the grocery store to tell him he smells good.
After I shamelessly tell him, in so few words, that the scent he gives off is pretty much delectable, the conversation warms up considerably. He asks me if it would be okay if he turns the radio off because he’d rather hear me talk. I’m thrilled, as I have secretly wished for less radio chatter and more human chatter on many previous dates. The conversation turns out to be so much better than the radio ever could be. We drive toward the nearest city, the conversation clicking instantly, the sparks flying. Rain starts pouring down, large amounts being swooshed out of our view by the windshield wipers, copious drops making their impact as they pelt and splatter new puddles of their friends on the road below us.
I tell him about how my first kiss happened in the rain, and this opens the conversation up to clever flirting.
Did you know that blind dates have a reputation for being bad? Whoa. I’m here to stand up in defense of the honor of blind dates everywhere, because this is some of the best chemistry of all time regardless of blindness, blurriness, or perfect 20/20 vision.
We meet up with his sister and her date. We hardly know they are there, except to politely add to the conversation on occasion. I can see them looking at us in wonder, so mesmerizing is the way in which this blind date has removed it’s sleep mask to a surprise better than Christmas morning.
By the time we say goodbye on my front porch that night, I- the guardian of all sacred kisses, am puckering up wholeheartedly. He hugs me and tells me, with a gravelly voice, that he sure wishes he believed in kissing on the first date, but he wouldn’t want to disrespect me.
I walk in the door, close it behind me and fall to the floor instantly, staring up at the ceiling as though it’s covered in twinkling stars and fluffy pink clouds made of cotton candy, and rainbows… beautiful, beautiful rainbows.
The face of my brother, Justin, looks down on me with concerned confusion because he’s a boy and doesn’t understand the dreamy sighs and the conscious, simulated fainting.
“I take it the date went… well?” he says.
I think I respond with something like, “Mmmm… rainbows are pretty.”
He’s truly shocked at my over-the-top happiness and asks the question that maybe you’re all asking, “Do you think you could like him more than you like Ryan?”
I frown and the clouds and rainbows swirl together in a psychedelic pinwheel. “I don’t know,” I say.
That’s the big question when you’re writing to a missionary, and it’s hard to know when you’re obligated to answer it. Do you have to decide who you like best on the first date? Within a week? Within a month? Within six months? If you have to decide in the first 23 minutes, I’m afraid the guy I went out with tonight is completely out of luck.
The very concept of having to choose is falsely flattering to me. I don’t really have a choice. It’s not like two boys are on their knees in front of me right this second. It’s not like I can make a T-Chart! This one’s good qualities versus that one’s. Bar graphs. Math formulas. Amie + X= Happily Ever After. It doesn’t work that way. It’s much more complicated. Amie+X(thepast)+fear about being hurt in the future+ letters that don’t even say "I love you" (greater than or less than Amie+Y(the present)- we don’t know anything yet.
Math and my brain don’t mix well. When I was in tenth grade my Dad jokingly said, “Take your final required math credit and if it doesn’t start clicking, then your senior year you can just take basket weaving.” I swallowed my pride and re-took a simpler math class and it finally did start to click. Eventually we figure things out. Sometimes we have to take the pressure off of ourselves by saying, “Hey! If we never get it, there’s always basket weaving.” Oh yeah, and “High School doesn’t matter.”
So my advice to myself as I traverse dating back home while writing to a missionary is this: “Try to experience life. Try to be honest with others and with yourself, and try to remember that if you’re living right you’ll figure everything out eventually. I can think of no metaphor for the basket weaving… I just really love my Dad.

My True Love Story

Writing To A Missionary

Day 2,140- 2,250ish

Elder Leonhardt-
I believe that we are blessed by the Lord just as fast as we prepare ourselves to receive blessings. I’ve seen this many times in my life. Most recently, I was offered an unexpected summer job here at home! I will be cleaning the local churches and maintaining church grounds! (That is the reason I glued grass on this week’s letter.) I know it doesn’t sound at all glamorous, but for some reason I love the idea of working in a quiet and familiar church. The older man that will be my manager laughed and said he loved the idea of Miss Emery County riding around on a riding lawn mower. Ever since he said that I picture myself mowing lawns with my banner and crown on, and for some reason I like the contradiction there.

Amie-
I hope that you like your new job. That should really keep you busy. Yes, I too have mowed some lawns in my time, but it really isn’t as bad as I said, I just wanted sympathy.
I want you to know that I appreciate people now. I have seen so much good in people. There is light in everything you see if you are looking for it. The light in you is amazing.
P.S. Remember when I first saw you at the church. I called you “Amos”. Remember when I used to keep the basketball away from you and you’d always get it.

Elder Leonhardt-
I’m sitting on my front porch swing on a beautiful rainy Sunday and I had to write you a letter! Sorry about the raindrops, but you know when it’s raining I HAVE to be out in it!
Thanks so much for the pictures! Your Mom and I were saying you look like you glow. Those people in California are the object of all of my envy because they get to see it in person. But they need you right now, and you are reaching so many of them. You really are amazing. I’m so happy to know you and write to you on your mission. Your letters and just the thought of you alone help me want to better myself.
P.S. Remember when I made you take off your shoes and wade in the gutter with me in the rain?

Amie-
Thank you for the letter. It really brightened my day. It was very helpful. I truly did need to hear exactly what you said.
I’ve been thinking about the way I was in high school. I wish I could do it over again and really make a difference. I’m going to do all I can for people. Maybe I still can make a difference.
I have seen many conversions while I have been here in California, but perhaps the greatest conversion is my own. I want the whole world to know what happiness and peace the Gospel brings to all homes, and especially my own.
P.S. Remember when we were voted “cutest couple” in the yearbook?
P.S.S. I am calling home for Mother’s Day on May 12th at 8:15. I am allowed to talk to you for a few minutes.


Elder Leonhardt-
I think of you a lot now that I spend so much time in the local church buildings. I have lots of memories of you there. I’m really glad you made some of the decisions you made back then. You were a lot smarter than I was. I’m glad you dated a lot, because I wouldn’t ever want to rob you of good learning experiences. You learned that I’m the best, right? ;) Anyway, it’s mostly thanks to what you did that we’ve come this far.
Last night your brother, Daymon, and his wife, Suzanne, did a fireside here in Ferron. I went and I couldn’t believe how much it made me think of you. Daymon is such an amazing person! He reminds me of you so much! They sang the song that you sang at your farewell. It was almost as if they wanted to torture me. ;)
Your Mom invited me over to visit when it was over and a lot of your family was there! My mouth always hurts when I leave your house because I can’t stop smiling and laughing the whole time I’m there.
Nathan remembered my name, piece of cake and his favorite Uncle is still “Uncle Rynie”. (I had to check that.) I hope all of this doesn’t make you homesick, but I wanted you to know how much I love your family. You are lucky to have them and they are lucky to have you.
P.S. Remember whenever I was at your house late, your Dad would invite me to have family prayer with you guys? That really touched me.




Elder Leonhardt-
I’m listening to your tape right now for about the sixth time… in three days. Your family has listened to it as well. I love hearing your voice especially when you’re talking about your beliefs… or me… I kinda like it when you talk about me too. ;) I have GOT to record a tape for you! You wouldn’t believe how different it is from letters! It makes me feel like I know you a lot better, like you are right here talking to me.
When I first listened to your tape I was surprised to hear you say, “I hope you’re keeping a list of all the things I want to do when I get home.” I turned around, reached into my desk drawer and pulled out the piece of paper which is titled, “Things to do with Ryan when he gets home…” Amazingly, going to Zion’s and Bryce Canyons are two of the first things on the list. Yeah, I’m way ahead of ya. I’m just starting to realize how much you and I think alike and I love it!


Amie-
It was so good to hear your voice on Sunday. You sounded great. I really don’t have a mind frame for anything except missionary work, so when I was talking to all of you I couldn’t think of anything to say. Yeah, I know it’s weird, but I couldn’t. I don’t mind it though. I want to be really out of it when I get home if that’s a sign of someone who was absorbed in missionary work.
Elder Leonhardt-
It was great to hear your voice for the few minutes we talked on the phone. I had fun talking to the rest of your family while I was there too. Your nieces and nephews are the cutest kids in the whole world! I love them so much! Remember when you always said your kids will be cuter than my kids and they’ll beat my kids in basketball? Anyway, Trav told me to come and visit next time I’m in Price. I really do love your family like they’re my own.
I love the stories you tell me about the people you are teaching in California. Someday I want to meet the families. I feel close to them, even though I don’t know them. Maybe that’s because we share the same feelings for you.
P.S. There was a man working on the floor of the cultural hall last week and I was shocked and excited to find out he was from Yuba City! He told me he would find you when he goes back home and tell you hello for me.
(Author's note: Other missionaries added this lovely commentary to my envelope. I was amused to find that missionaries took the opportunity to embelish my evelopes with fake messages quite often.)



Amie-
Yesterday Elder Hunt and I were out on our bikes and we were having a deep conversation about pride. He wasn’t looking where he was going. You know those “Road Work Ahead” signs? Well, Elder Hunt rammed the sign. I laughed a little bit. Okay, you got me, I laughed a lot.
P.S. I was standing in Priesthood meeting on Sunday greeting people coming in and some guy comes up to me and says, “Hello Elder Leonhardt, I just got through talking to your counterpart, Amie.” I put my hand on his shoulder and asked for a repeat. He told me about how he had been doing the gym floor in Ferron and talked to a beautiful girl named Amie. It was really fun to talk to him.
Elder Leonhardt-
I’m really sorry I missed a week and I’m sorry this letter is rushed.
I have been so busy with my responsibilities as Miss Emery County! I am so nervous for the Miss Utah pageant, and feel so ill prepared as I hear that other contestants spend years getting themselves ready for the competition. I think my interest in pageants ends on the County level and I will be glad when this is over with! This week I had to not only work, but “reign” over the county fair and be in the parade. I still have to write an article for the newspaper and make a video for the local TV station.
P.S. Remember when we would write notes and you would only write one word all of the time. “Tell.” Or “Yep.” My late letters are only payback! ;)
Amie-
I was thinking about you today and all of your thoughts and all of your hopes and dreams, and you know what? They are the same as mine.
The work is going well. I feel a desperation in my testifying. I want the people to be what they can be so badly. I have committed to memory first Corinthians chapter 13. I have been able to memorize as much in an hour as I used to in ten hours.
P.S. Remember when I was talking to you from your window and that kitten kept attacking my leg?
Elder Leonhardt-
I can’t believe that you so casually mentioned in your letter that you changed your hairstyle! Your hair is iconic! Therefore, I am anxiously awaiting pictures, and this letter is dedicated to the possibilities of what your new hairstyle might look like. Are any of these correct? :)



P.S. I laughed SO hard when I remembered that cat that kept attacking you outside of my window! You would be mid-sentence and the silly thing would jump right up and lay its claws into your jeans! You’d kick it off, resume talking, and it would do it all over again, playing a game with you! I’m laughing so hard right now that I can’t write! It was SO funny! I love our memories.

Elder Leonhardt-
Oh Gosh. The other day, I had a date come to the house and you should’ve heard what my little brother, Jordan, said to him! He looked right at him and said, “Amie’s gonna marry Ryan when he gets off his mission.” My family had a good laugh about it, but it was a terrible situation for a moment or two!
I want you to know that I am dating as we agreed that I would do while you are away. I wouldn’t mention it, but someone suggested to me that it was dishonest for me not to tell you about my dating in our letters. I thought I should ask and make sure. Do you still feel the same about not wanting to hear about it or has that changed?
Amie-
No, I haven’t changed. I do NOT want to hear about your dating experiences. I think it is great that you are dating good people (as I know you would) and I think you will grow from it as you have already found. I think that story is hilarious though, and I appreciate Jordan’s looking out for me.

My True Love Story

Author's note: Please don't let my writing about my beliefs alienate (or bore, or offend) you if you aren't a member of my church. These stories are really about a young girl figuring out who she is and who she loves. We all have to do that in one way or another! :) Thanks for reading!

Where Do You Look To Find Yourself?
Day 2,140ish

I know one place that I look. It’s a little town in Southern Utah and it’s called Beaver. I don’t know why it defines me so. It might be because I spent two crucial, transitional years there, seventh and eighth grade. It might be because my first real interactions with boys took place there. It might be because it’s a small town where everyone knows each other and most are related, but they eventually accepted me as one of them. It might be because of the traditions they have in that little town that are different from anywhere else that I know. The all-out way they celebrate the fourth of July, the way they spend their summers at co-ed 4-H camp and putting on summer plays in a quaint little playhouse, or the way they end their summers with an ice-cream sundae party that turns into a food fight, and then a late night swimming party at the local pool. It might even be that I moved away, and when something ends prematurely we romanticize it until we remember it more wonderful that it even was. But ah well, I like doing that.
J went to the same college that I did. I’ll never forget registration. I don’t think I’ve ever been so overwhelmed in my life. I was staring blankly at lists and lists of classes and it could have been a foreign language. I didn’t know what I wanted to be, or even what path to start down. The excitement of escaping my regular life and embarking on the college adventure was quickly being replaced with cold, hard reality, and bleak, shuddering fear. My parents helped all they could, but it was a little like when the math homework finally got so advanced that they didn’t know how to explain it anymore. I felt distanced from the others that were here with me from Emery County. None of them were someone I’d feel comfortable going to and saying, “I’m in over my head and so afraid.” I didn’t know where to turn for help.
After awhile, we muddled through the actual registration, and then my parents and I left the others and went to campus to sign paperwork for my apartment and some other things. We pulled into a giant parking lot and there, walking just a few feet from where our vehicle was facing, I saw someone so familiar I’d swear I’d known him longer than just this life. It was J. Seeing him was like cold winter nights when I’d put a flannel quilt in the dryer until it was toasty all over and then I’d wrap it around myself and completely shut out the chill in the air. I jumped out of the car without thinking, and called his name. It was a blessing to have run into him on this huge campus, filled with hundreds of people, none as wonderful as he was. Hearing his name called out randomly startled him and he looked in my direction. I ran to him and threw my arms around him in a relieved hug, even with my parents looking on. He reciprocated, startled but happy. After that moment, college stopped feeling quite so lonely.
Now, months later, months of college experience that leave me just as desperate for the dryer heated quilt experience, I visit him at his dorm room. “J, my college apartment makes me feel like I’ve been cast on an episode of MTV’s ‘The Real World’, and I’m the conservative Mormon girl that is pitifully sheltered and naïve.”
J is a great listener. He just turns up one corner of his mouth signaling that he hears me, but also that my dramatics entertain him, which only comforts me because if he thinks the concern is small enough to be amused by, then it must be.
Two of my roommates are from Chicago, and they’re all pierced and tattooed and they like to go to clubs and go dancing. They’re really nice, though they look at me like they think I was not born, but rather just sort of wandered out of a corn field one day. Then I have my Japanese roommate, who cooks huge, foreign smelling Japanese meals for her friends in our kitchen, and fills the room with indecipherable chatter and the sink with even less decipherable dishes that don’t get clean as quickly as any of us would like. I have the roommate who has recently fallen in love with the boy from the apartment across the parking lot, and they are so in love that the parking lot has become too far a distance for them to be separated. At night, he cuddles into her bed, and in the daytime, he stores his milk in our fridge. The roommate I share a room with is beautiful, accomplished and headed in the direction of world domination. I met her when I competed against her at Miss Utah State Fair. What I wouldn’t give to have her confidence. The look in her eye and the shade of her lipstick says, “Bring it on world.” She gives me great make-up tips, fashion advice and life advice, but I feel a little like a small girl playing dress up. There is one other roommate who seems to love the small town life, as I do. She’s less afraid than I am though, and she has a gift for laughing even when she feels like crying. It’s a magnetic trait and I find myself drawn to be laughing alongside her. She’s writing to a missionary as well, and it’s given us a starting off point for a great friendship.
“I don’t know what I’ll do without you when you leave for Australia,” I tell J. He’s received his mission call, and I’m really pumped about the idea of him acquiring an Australian accent.
“You worry too much,” he tells me, and he has a way of making the remark sound like a compliment. “Are you going to make it to my farewell?”
“I wouldn’t miss it!” I say.
It seems like the next thing I know, I am there, hearing his farewell talk and being not at all surprised by its insight, intelligence and humor. Australia is a lucky place, and speaking of places, I spend the rest of the Sunday looking around the small town of Beaver with a dreamy look in my eye. This town is straight out of a storybook… instead of the reality show I feel trapped in. It’s been the scene for a lovely part of my story. Late night high school football games, my young, teenage hand clutched in someone else’s. Night games, one of which ended with me stepping on a rusty nail. My eyes always searching the streets for that shiny, red Toyota truck. My first experiences with the phone ringing and the person on the other end being a boy, calling for me. Hugs that I was sure were more of a thrill than any kiss ever could be.
You know what I’m learning? There isn’t just one place that you’re “meant to be” in. There isn’t just one person that you’re “meant to be” with. We don’t have to go through life searching for the one right answer. We can choose between so many good things, and we can make any of them into a happy life. I used to believe in destiny, but now I believe in pro-activity. I believe we can make our happy ending anything we want it to be.
Dear Elder Leonhardt,
I’ve made a big decision this week. I’m going to spend the summer at home and attend Snow College in the fall. The atmosphere just seems to fit me better. I’ll explain it all one day when you get home. I’ve had some major answers to prayer, and for that I will be truly, eternally grateful. I’ve found that sometimes we have to swallow up our fears and do as it says in Proverbs 3:5-6, Trust in the Lord and lean not unto our own understanding because even when things are falling apart, our Heavenly Father can comfort us. He knows so much more than I do, I hope I can learn to trust Him and turn my whole life to Him.
President Ezra Taft Benson said, “Men and Women who turn their lives to God will find that he can make a lot more of their lives than they can. He will deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, raise up friends and pour out peace.” Those are some beautiful promises aren’t they?
There is so much more I want to say, but I’m out of time. I can’t wait for your next letter, sometimes I live for them. I’m so glad the Lord blesses me with your friendship.
Love, Amie

Dear Amie,
Moving can be another thing we experience together, but separate. I’m being transferred to a new area this week. There’s so much to do before I go. I have to pack everything up. It’s like moving away from home every two months.
I pray for you every day. Prayers are so important. I have found that I am nothing without communication with God. I just bought four study guides for the four standard works. I want to know all that I can. I want to become as Jacob is in Jacob 2:2, a man who when he talks, everyone listens, and I see myself slowly doing that.
It’s March Madness right now. I haven’t seen a basketball game in four months, but for some reason it doesn’t bother me at all. Remember when I would make a huge bracket of all the college teams and have a betting pool? You filled one out, and you were a pretty good guesser.
I’ve been doing a little genealogy on P-day. It is really fun. My Great, Great Grandpa Jacob Fredrick Leonhardt was the first to join the church in my family, so the first boy will be named Jacob?
Love, Elder Leonhardt

Elder Leonhardt,
Jacob huh? Hmmm… let me search MY geneology awhile and then I’ll let you know. ;)

A Modern Day True Love Story

Day So-close-to-forever-that-it-no-longer-matters :)

I sat and stared at the computer screen forever last night. Then I wrote a paragraph. Then I erased it. Then I wrote three paragraphs that I thought were good, but didn’t seem right for the story I wanted to write. Then I got a little bugged that ESPN was on in the background. Then I went for a drive. Then I came home and still didn’t have my story, so at 10:30pm I gave up and watched old episodes of ER until I fell asleep. Like I said in the last post… things are all mixed up right now, and when things are taxing my mind I can’t always write! So I’ve decided the “My True Love Story” for the week will just be a little peek into the current life of Ryan and me. (By the way, I hate “Ryan and me”. That sounds so wrong. Why does Microsoft Word tell me that “Ryan and I” is wrong? I know. It’s because I wouldn’t say “take a peek into the life of I”. Still, it seems very wrong.)
So I’m stressed about a lot of things right now. Some are huge, and you wouldn’t think I was being a drama queen, you would say, “Wow. That really is huge.” Some are PTA responsibilities and kid responsibilities and laundry and Halloween and searching out which garbage can smells funny, and having our parents over for dinner tonight, and needing to seem like I keep a perfect house and make a perfect meal for that, and…. well, you get the point.
I was furiously scrubbing the kitchen table this morning as Ryan was getting ready for work. The Fruity Pebbles had already dried on and stuck. You people with kids too grown up for this… cherish it! CHERISH IT I SAY! So I was scrubbing and the phone was ringing and the kids were whining and my mind was reeling and I said, in a breathless voice, “I just don’t have time for the nervous break-down that I deserve!”
Ryan hates comments like that. He truly is allergic to negativity. It makes him physically ill. So he said, much to my consternation, “Don’t say things like that.”
Not. A. Good. Move.
I decided he needed to learn a lesson about his wife and when to let her negativity fly. So I got the spray bottle full of water. I walked down the hall calling, “You can’t get away with your non-supportive nature this morning!”
I came around the corner to the bathroom doorway like a woman on a mission, turning the nozzle so that my hit would be forceful and direct. I startled him. His eyes grew large. Time slowed as I pulled the trigger. My aim has never been anything to brag about, so I didn’t really bother aiming, just went for his general direction. I was smiling until I saw the water missile, in its seeming, slow motion trajectory shoot straight for his left eye. My smile faded a little and my eye brows rose up to join it in an “oops”.
I watched as the water, quite of its own volition (and through very little fault of my own) shot, with some force, right into my husband’s open eyeball. The residual droplets sprayed the whole left side of his face.
After he huffed and yanked the towel off the rack, dried his face and blinked the wounded eye a couple of times he used his this-is-somehow-my-fault-for-marrying-a-crazy-woman voice to ask, “What the heck did you do that for?”
I resumed my served-you-right attitude for long enough to get my point across and then I just flopped over on our bed and laughed long and loud until tears were coming out of my eyes. WAY better than the nervous break-down that we all deserve, but none of us have the time for. Hopefully you can just get a chuckle from my experience and then you won’t have to shoot unsuspecting people in the eyeball.
The end. Have a great Monday!

In The Quiet Moments

Things have been a little mixed up lately. I guess I’ve been missing my Dad. Fall is all about my Dad. It’s strange to see the leaves change without him here to point out how pretty they look. He’d be out on the mountain with my brothers, even if he was here, and sick, that’s how they’d celebrate their October birthdays (his and the twins’ are just a day apart). We wouldn’t even get to Thanksgiving before he’d be scheming about how to get away with spending more money than he should on us for Christmas.
I’ve been on a kick since he passed away, talking about how life is mostly hard. Which is just a basic fact. Day to day, there are mostly challenges and setbacks, annoyances, diets, reasons to cry, reasons to zone out and distract ourselves with TV and computers so that when we turn them off we can face reality again for a little while. My argument is usually that every once in awhile there is a magical little moment. Something like you hearing your kids laughing in the other room, during one of those rare occasions when they’re playing amongst themselves instead of thinking of demands for you to fulfill. My theory states that those moments, by some miracle, make the tough moments (numerous as they are) all worth it.
My sister in law, Tasha, and I were discussing the theory the other day on the phone. She said, “It’s true. Life is mostly hard. But what do you think about in the quiet moments? Do you think about how hard everything was that day?”
I said, “No, I guess I don’t.”
She said, “My mind automatically goes back to how cute my kids looked doing this or that, or how much fun something coming up is going to be. I don’t find myself thinking about the hard stuff.”
Today I was looking through old pictures, trying to find one of Luke when he was a pirate, so that I could convince him that it’s okay for boys to have make-up on their faces if it’s Halloween, especially if it’s to create a beard.
I found the pictures of him when he was a newborn. I remembered being pregnant with him. I was really sick for the first months, and no sooner had that ended than I got two severe cases of the flu, seemingly one right after the other. Ryan went to Christmas parties without me while I lay in bed next to a garbage can, sweating, uncomfortable and massive and sure I’d never live through it. I hated not being well enough to take care of my kids. I hated pleading with God to make me well and still feeling sick. I tried to think of the “something that I’m supposed to learn from all of this”, but I couldn’t think of a darn thing.
I thought of Tasha’s words. “What do you think about in the quiet moments? Do you think about how hard everything is?”
I looked at our smiling pictures, holding baby Luke.

I looked at one Ryan took of me, after I fell asleep while praying because I was so tired that I couldn’t get on my knees and stay awake through my prayer. I can even smile and chuckle at that one now.
I looked at a picture of my Mom, trying to figure out the camera so that she could take a picture of my Dad holding the baby… and I wasn't sad.
Maybe life isn’t so hard after all. I think what matters most is what settles into your heart and mind… in the quiet moments.

Luke and his cousin Dax.

My Dad and Luke.

My True Love Story

Words Written on Pages

Day 2,042ish

Pink lid guy... what? I can’t give them all masculine colored lids. A girl’s got to color co-ordinate. Pink lid guy lives in a dorm full of Utah Utes fans. I am a BYU fan by association to Ryan, therefore it was my duty to taunt them. The taunting didn’t seem to bother them, quite the opposite in fact. I wonder how Ryan would feel knowing he’s given me flirting ammunition.
Pink lid guy is blond haired, blue eyed and a little rough around the edges. He almost always wears a baseball cap. We went to church together once, and he cleaned up great, in a stylish dress shirt and tie, but even then you could tell he wasn’t in his natural state. When I hang out at their place with him and his friends, I feel like I’m doing something just a little bit shady. Maybe it’s that I’m away from home with no parental supervision as a safety net or maybe it’s that these guys ooze “playerhood” and I’m afraid I’m out of my cockpit of control. Whenever I’m here, I can practically hear my conscience screaming “Mayday! Mayday!”
Pink lid guy is sitting next to me in the dorm’s common room on a couch that is so ugly I doubt it’s ever even seen better days, different shades of scratchy brown yarn woven around each other, intermingled with bits of college boy grime. His roommates and friends are teasing him about me openly. He vaguely enjoys their banter, but focuses lazy eyes on me… feeding me lines with a practiced sincerity that I’m sure has worked marvelously in the past. It’s with an astounding amount of contrived embarrassment that he manages to both hesitantly and determinedly admit to me that he writes a little poetry. “Nooo,” I say, playing my part in this little skit, saying a word that slews of girls have said before me, and they probably said it with true enthusiasm. To be honest though, I’m starting to believe that I can’t be with a boy poet. I’m the emotional poet in my relationships, and I can’t imagine there being room for more than one.
“I could… show you one of my poems… if you want,” he offers.
“I’d love that!” I say, and I am very curious what sort of poems pour out of that baseball cap clad brain.
“Come with me,” he says, “It’s upstairs. I wrote it in my friends’ yearbook.”
“Upstairs?” I say. Mayday. Mayday. “You mean, upstairs where the bedrooms are?”
He looks at me like I’m a little girl, speaking little girl talk that’s hard to understand.
“Come on,” he says.
I follow him, but I linger in a small kitchen area while he goes to rifle through old yearbooks. I stare, riveted, at the monopoly game board that’s hanging on the wall. The boys have acquired it from McDonald’s, and are doing an admirable job of filling it with the game pieces that they accumulate by eating there. He comes out and places the book in front of me on the kitchen table, saying, “I mean, I don’t know if it’s any good, but it made a lot of people laugh and it kind of became famous around my school.”
Now I’m more interested. A poem that made people laugh? This I can see genuinely coming from the attractive boy in the baseball cap. I read the poem, scrawled next to a humorous sketch of a cow in a field. The poem is written in the words of the cow, and it makes me laugh out loud. I’m thoroughly impressed. I see a new dimension to pink lid guy, and I praise him appropriately for his cleverness.

Before long, snow falls over the campus and it’s time to go home for Christmas break. I wonder what life is like for a missionary at Christmas time. I wonder what presents I should get for all of the people on my list. I wonder why I’m still seeing pink lid guy when the truth is, he makes me uneasy. I know he isn’t right for me, but I’m the worst at ending relationships. The very worst. I can’t instigate a non-happy ending! It goes against everything I stand for.
Being home is so welcome, my memories of it are all sunny and warm, even the ones at Christmastime, for some reason. Beautiful, comfortable, warm, sunny home. Thank you Mom and Dad, for giving me a place like this. I’m lying on my stomach on the living room floor. (I would never lie on the floor at college. Ewww. The years’ worth of nobody knows what that’s gone on atop that college apartment carpet.) Next to me there is a stack of comics, straight from the weekly newspapers. My Uncle Devear and Aunt Virginia like to save them for us and give them to us in stacks. They like to do little things for us kids, little thoughtful things that they hope we’ll enjoy.
I like to peruse the comics and cut out my favorites to send to Ryan. We don’t often write of our feelings, a rare paragraph here and there. A good chuckle is about the best thing I can send him across the miles.
Dear Ryan,
It’s Christmas Day and I’ve found a new way of driving my family crazy. About every fifteen minutes I say, “Just think, Ryan could be on the phone with his family right now!” Then they all moan and wish, like I do, that I was at your house talking to you too. Two years ago yesterday, you sang my song for me, the one that you wrote about me. Remember? And last year I wasn’t speaking to you at Christmastime.

Dear Amie,
Thank you for the Christmas package. I sleep on the blanket every night, and I look at the pictures of you too much. Sometimes I let my mind wander and think of us in the future. It really does make me happy to think about that. I hope you like the ring I sent. I wore it for a day or two to warm it up for you. I like that it says, “Best Friends Forever” because I believe that’s what we are. Remember when you said that someday I would feel sorry about how I treated you? Well, I really do. It makes me sick to even think about it. I hope you don’t still think about it, because I truly am sorry.
How is it that Ryan is still making all of the other boys look bad? Even with just words on a page? Even with just those rare paragraphs every couple of letters, where he tells me that he thinks of me “too much”. I guess it’s because something inside me is telling me that they aren’t just words. They’re truth, and truth is powerful.
So I try to send truth back without distracting a missionary from his work, and I try to entertain him with a little humor. Some of my favorite comics are the Far Side comics with their laugh out loud observations about life. As I flip through the big, awkward pages of the newspaper comics, I suddenly see one that sends me springing from my relaxed position on my stomach to my knees, my chin jumping out of its restful place on my hands and jutting forward for a closer look.
I see a caricature of a cow, standing upright on his hind legs in front of an audience of other cows, a word bubble coming from his mouth. What, you might ask, is the cow saying? He’s reading a poem, a very funny poem. A very familiar poem... one I read in a yearbook recently. And last I checked, Pink Lid guy doesn’t write the Far Side comics.

Pink lid guy just instigated a non-happy ending, so that I don’t have to.
It’s a blustery night, my first one back at college after Christmas break. Pink lid guy called and asked me to come over. My hands are stuffed in my pockets, along with a small, square comic, cut from a newspaper, as I walk into the common room of his dorm. I ask him to sit on the couch, the boy-germ infested one, and I pull out the comic. I hand it to him and wait quietly while he reads it. He must wonder at his bad luck that I would stumble upon his fib and forgery just a couple of weeks after he had delivered it to my impressionable mind. “You lied to me,” I say. “You didn’t write the poem.” How can one respond when confronted with a lie that is so blatant, it’s published in a newspaper? You can hum and haw, you can even claim that Gary Larson must have stolen the idea from your high school yearbook. If the girl who’s accusing you is heart-broken and scorned, it could get pretty messy, but I’m kind. Because the truth is, this isn’t the reason I won’t be seeing him anymore. He’s a good guy… for someone else. I hope his future involves being happily married to a stunningly beautiful and agreeably, gullible girl. He’s going to write her poetry. Words like, “Near…far… wherever you are, I believe that my heart will go on.” She is going to blissfully pretend that the poem wasn’t stolen from the theme song of the movie Titanic. I wish them well.