I love BYU

Wow. I keep wondering if this is the way things are normally around here. Everywhere you go, there are people being courteous. Doors are held for everyone, people say please and thank you (and you can tell they mean it), you get smiles and hellos just walking down the street, traveling anywhere on campus can be done very quickly by bus, bike, or foot, you know you’re getting enough exercise because your feet and legs always hurt, your dorm smells like something good and oriental all the time, your room mate is awesome and loves music like most people love air, you go to devotionals where the material is always well seasoned and presented in harmony with the gospel of Jesus Christ, you attend orientation sessions where the on-stage band does an unscheduled encore where one of the guitarists sings, plays, and proposes to his girlfriend in front of thousands of Freshmen (and it’s actually well written and performed), and after watching Les Miserables with Christie and Mikayla you meander back to your apartment where you and your roomies provide a blessing to Mikayla who is sick. I think that covers everything, except that I’m about to fall on my face from exhaustion. There should be a word for that blissful exhaustion that comes from knowing you have consciously chosen your path for every fraction of a moment that day, knowing you did your absolute best, and knowing that you get to do it all over again in the morning.

It reminds me of marching off the field of competition at the RCA dome, knowing that eight months of painstaking effort had come to fruition in a single moment of inexpressible bliss. Presently, however, that joy is riding continually and is not limited to the confines of a moment, but is expansive over every moment of your life (both waking and sleeping). It is the joy that has been built upon nearly 19 years of effort, sacrifice, growth, love received, and love given. You know, looking at things like that makes you realize that although God plays a hand in every moment of life, he is 100% a respecter of agency. Thus, your life is the culmination of human hands working for some ultimate goal. God created you so that you could create yourself. Really, he knows who you are and who you can be, but you have to learn for yourself who you are and what you will become. That’s the crux to this entire experience.

Anyway, tangents aside, I love it here. I can see why there’s a “bubble” around BYU, but it’s so refreshing when compared to the rest of the world. And the experience of assisting in Nate blessing Mikayla was wonderful. I love it here.