Thinking Back...

For all of you returned missionaries out there, remember this feeling? Remember the feeling of sheer and utter exhaustion? I remember feeling soo tired all the time. Even on those days when I got a good night's sleep, took a nap during lunch, and went to sleep early, I was still crazy tired. My last area was a bike area, and I can say from experience, riding in a bike with a skirt on is no easy task, and can be very draining.

Picture this: 3 20 something girls, on bikes, in matronly looking outfits, complete with knee highs, wearing bulky and yet colorful bike helmets. The wind is blowing, so they are trying to keep their skirts from not only flying into their braking mechanisms, which ruins the brakes and the skirt, but also from it flying up over their heads. It is very obvious they are wearing knee-highs because of two things: the wind is blowing their skirts everywhere, and the fact that their legs haven't seen the light of day for months and months and the contrast on white legs and tan knee-highs is obvious. Now to top it all off, its raining buckets, so one girl is wearing a bright blue poncho, another is wearing a bright green poncho. The third is wearing a garbage bag because there was only two ponchos, but it doesn't matter; the raining is pouring down so hard, all three of them are drenched. If you saw this spectacle riding along on the sidewalk as you were driving by, you would probably laugh or at least do a double take, right? Especially if you hit a good puddle while passing them; thus dousing them with dirty, greasy water. We, meaning the spectacle, thought it was pretty funny too! I have never laughed as much as I did while I was with those two girls. Instead of getting angry or upset, we just laughed at the situation, and there were lots of situations to laugh at!

I'm getting off topic. I was not only physically tired; I was emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually exhausted as well. It took a major toll on my body. I was already good at falling asleep before my mission. At sleepovers, many of my friends would get angry with me because I would fall asleep right when the lights went off. I once fell asleep practicing the saxophone! On the mission, however, it was more prevalent. I was famous for falling asleep in the most random places. In the picture above, I actually fell asleep on someones front porch step while we were waiting for them to come home. I could spout off a bunch more times of when I've fallen asleep, but I think you get the point. I'm pretty sure T can say the same thing; he looks pretty tired in that picture, too.

Maybe I wasn't listening, but no one ever told me how tired I was going to be. I was told a lot of other things, like: you're gonna get fat, you're gonna get ugly, no one will want you when you come home because you are now fat and ugly, and you could find your eternal companion while out.

No joke! People actually told me the last one. I heard it from a bunch of people before I left, from my stake president, my bishop, my dad, people in my ward, people I kind of knew, people my parents kind of knew, and people in the MTC. I like to think of it as a sign. As many of you know, T and I served in the same mission at the same time. We were in the same zone together for a couple of transfers. I firmly believe T and I were meant to be together. I feel I was sent to Texas for a number of reasons, and one of them being to meet my future husband. Our courtship and marriage haven't always been a fairy tale, but I do feel they were necessary for me being a stronger and better person.

I am grateful for my mission; it was an awesome time, not to mention, well worth it. Maybe all those exhausting days were preparing me for motherhood, physically speaking. I hear mothers tend to get a tad sleepy from time to time... ;)