Countdowns

There is so much I want to say on this thing. But no words are rolling off my fingertips to the keyboard. Too many thoughts rolling around in the head. But I will pinpoint just one. The countdown.

In 14 days I will be on a plane. 2 weeks. I remember the first few days thinking of December. "Oh December, you are so far away! What will I feel like then?" I'm not exactly sure what I thought December would be like, but not this. Time is going the fastest and slowest it ever has. I am SO excited to be home. To see my family and friends again. To partake in Christmas traditions. To be in America. Oh, how I love America.

So in my head this clock is constantly ticking. Tick. 14 days until home. Tock. 51 days until Disneyland. Tick. 64 days until missionary. Tock. I keep telling it to stop, but it doesn't. The excitement keeps feeding it.

Yesterday a wise man talked about countdowns to Christmas in his testimony. He said that they are fun, but sometimes they distract us from how special each day leading to Christmas is. Those are the days to be enjoyed. Learning about our Savior, serving others, enjoying the excitement itself. How true his words were in all aspects of life, not just Christmas countdowns. This reminded me of the words of another wise man I know. "Enjoy the Moment." I am lucky to call this wise man father. I am lucky that he has ingrained this in my head my whole life.

I am enjoying the moment. I know how lucky I am to be here. I know that I will probably never be here again. I know I will never see many of these people again. I know how much I will miss this place. I know as soon as I am home I will cry in my bed for a few days. That is how I work. I know that I will spend hours looking at pictures and reading journal entries.

But for now I don't want the sadness of leaving to weigh these last weeks down. I don't want the excitement of going home to make me impatient. I just want to simply live. Big things are coming up in the next few months. But these little days before those big things are not to be wasted. They are to be learned from. They are to be enjoyed. They are to be lived.