love

This weekend I did the photography for one of my mission companion's weddings. Married already! And another missionary that was with me along the whole ride--there when I started, there when I finished--is coming home next week. Him coming home is kind of a bullet to the gut. I guess part of me thought it would never end. Part of me thought he'd always exist in France, walking up and down the aisles in trains, contacting people on busses. Part of me thought all of us would always be living in mission land, going in to the mission office, having conferences every couple of weeks, doing that silly wonderful grocery shopping every Monday. Now that they're all coming home, I'm realizing that it does end. A year and a half is actually a tiny, tiny amount of time,

and it goes
and it goes
and it goes.

I thought those relationships would be forever too. And they are, but they shift. I thought they'd be constant like the constellations, all neat and tidy in their little formations, makin neat and tidy little animals and warriors in their heroic groupings across the sky. But you come home and realize people have lives and social groups and maybe didn't secretly hope to be friends with you for the rest of forever. Ha. It's like all the stars still exist but they don't make Orion anymore... they make... well... a bunch of individual stars with individual solar systems and orbiting planets. We aren't in relation to each other anymore.

Once my friend said her greatest fear was that other people didn't love her as deeply as she loved them. I get that now. I would do anything for any one of those missionaries or for those people I met in France. I love them with all my heart. I guess I get what my friend's fear is. What a beautiful fear.

Someone -- I think it was Hemingway -- said the way to get over a woman is to write a novel about her. And so maybe I'll do that about what happened in France. There would be epic battles where a tiny group of brave and shining people go face all the evil forces imaginable. And they'd do things like ride horses with forcefields shooting out of their staffs to save each other, and figure out the riddles that unlock doors that have been locked to goodness for centuries, and release thousands of dead people from the curses of past mistakes, and let what virtue is theirs pass to those around them. They'd forget the taste of strawberries and give every last drop of themselves to restoring goodness and hope. They would sacrifice and they would love. Yep.

Blehhh I just didn't know loving people in this way existed.
Blehhh and it just gets worse everyday.

Go on a mission people.
Get baptized first if you haven't done that yet,
and then just go.