I THINK I FINALLY FIGURED OUT MY LIFE

I remember being asked a few simple questions by my mother growing up. The questions were (in some variance), “Why do you think they acted in that way?” or “How do you think that made them feel?” To which I would answer, “Nobody thinks about those things, Mom!” But my mother did, so I had to talk with her about it.

I never thought twice about the impact those discussions had on me. It was just annoying conversations I was forced to have with my mother. However, now that I am much older and have a better understanding of who I am, I can look back on my life and see just what kind of impact those conversations had on me at such a young age.

As I reflect back on my life, I realize that I had always possessed a great amount of empathy because of those discussions. I would always recognize the kid that didn’t have any friend and who was alone, and I would literally hurt on the inside thinking about what they must feel and imagining what my life would be like every single day in their shoes. Still to this day I go into a little trance when I see people that appear lonely or hurt. All my senses seem to diminish, and I feel intense pain and isolation for a moment.  Although I was never excessively bullied growing up, I could also just sense the pain and anguish of a person getting bullied when I was younger and still to this day. I was never very good at reaching out and being a huge helping hand, but I always did my best to make sure that everyone felt uplifted and respected.

I have always been a very outgoing person and was even voted “Life of the Party” for my senior class, and as I look back I realize I had (and still have) a lot of internal conflict because reaching out to “the one” (as Jesus would say) wasn’t what someone like myself was “supposed to do”. I still struggle with this. I still do a terrible job at reaching out to “the one”. I guess that is part of the struggle living with what seems to be two completely contrasting sides to yourself. Sometimes I feel badly about myself because I feel like people only know my outgoing and fun side and I don’t always know how to introduce a completely contrasting side of me to them. Its hard to be personal and intimate with someone when all that they know of you is your incredibly outgoing side. But, I am slowly learning how to be my full self and hopefully I can figure it out!

Kind of switching it up a bit here after a bit of a sidetracked rant about myself… but in high school I was quite successful in track & field. I felt like one of the largest parts of my identity was the success I had on the track. I always wanted to win to impress people and kind of craved the attention that came with being good. I would often think about what other people thought about me in the stands as I came cruising down the homestretch ahead of the competition. My junior year I was the state champion in the 400m and was gunning for the repeat my senior year to go along with hopefully two other big victories at the state meet. Long story short, I got beat in all of my races. Pretty big bummer for someone who cared a lot about winning and impressing people. But I learned something powerful that day as I participated for the last time ever on the track. I remember sitting on the infield after all the races were over and losing everything I had worked so hard for and looking around at all the other people gathered, and realizing that more than anything I was going to miss my teammates, my friends, my coaches, my competitors, the coaches at the other schools, and basically just anybody I met. I realized that the reason I loved track so much was because of all of the people. I realized that what was actually important to me was the legendary bus rides with my teammates, building relationships with my different coaches, and becoming friends with the kids I competed against. I realized what it was all about the whole time. It was all about building relationships and connecting with people. Learning this lesson, in that moment, made me want to help others learn this without having to sacrifice years of pride and selfishness to understand it and brought me a better understanding of who I am and who I want to be.

After high school I got a job working with The Boys & Girls Club. I had the opportunity to work with children all summer long, which, as the youngest child in my family, was pretty foreign. That summer was so much fun, but it also really began my interest in human development. I was exposed to children who came from all sorts of homes, behaved in all sorts of different ways, and connected with me in all different ways. I was always intrigued to learn what their parents were like when the kids go picked up by them. I started to see why certain kids acted certain ways by watching them interact with their parents and I was fascinated by that. I started to think more seriously about working with youth as a career and wanted to be able to have a positive impact on them because I saw how much a lot of youth needed an adult to trust and love. This was more than just a fun summer job for me. It was an eye opening experience for me and my future.

I left away on my mission expecting the opportunity to meet and teach lots of people about the gospel. As my amazing mission unfolded I learned a whole ton about a lot of things: the gospel, myself, other people, Texas, religion, etc. As I sat across from my mission president in my departing interview he asked me what the one thing I would take home with me that wouldn’t go in my suitcase, and I told him, “a testimony”. Now, I don’t want to downgrade that answer at all, because at the time that was a heartfelt and honest answer. I grew a tremendous testimony, and nothing can ever take that away from me. But, nearly two years removed from my mission I now realize the greatest thing I took away from my mission. I had some absolutely amazing experiences teaching the gospel and seeing people find greater light in their lives, but those memories pale in comparison to the opportunities I had to simply be there for some people. I remember having lengthy discussion with some of my companions because they didn’t think it was worth our time to keep going back to certain people because they weren’t “progressing” and worth our time. But what I saw in some of those people was a need for my presence. For example, I remember my good friend Sam. He was in his 80’s and “lonely as hell". I would sit on that man’s couch in his nasty smoky house for multiple hours usually two times a week and talk about his life and things he was struggling with. The dude couldn’t comprehend the gospel or remember things we told him, but I felt such a strong connection and need to be there for that man. Missionaries would tell me for months and months after I left that he wouldn’t stop talking about me whenever they would go offer him service or anything. That relationship is one of my greatest successes. I remember my friend Lovenia who was a convert of a couple years and no longer active in the church. She hadn't kept a commitment from the missionaries in a long time and we had basically gone away from teaching her altogether, but I felt such power come from sitting with her in her home, laughing with her, and letting her know that we loved her for who she was. I remember the people I served more than anything, especially when that service went against everything we were supposed to do as missionaries. I loved teaching the gospel, loved it loved it loved it, but those memories can’t compare to the memories I have connecting with people and learning to love them for who they were and being there for them regardless of their progress in being taught.

I returned home from my mission and was able to substitute teach a bit before school started. Although days were exhausting trying to handle a class full of 10 year olds, I freaking loved it. I gloried in the opportunity to be a positive role model for the kids. There would be days that I would be standing in the halls of the middle school during passing period with kids streaming down the hall getting high fives from me because they loved me so much when I subbed their class. I realized that I wanted those feelings for the rest of my life. But I just had no idea what in the world to teach if I went into education and how I would make a living.

I started school and thought about doing some sort of education degree, but that wasn’t really going anywhere. I had a few other random ideas but nothing ever seemed to click or make sense in my heart. So basically I was just taking a bunch of general classes that I hated. School flipping blew. It sucked. But, I was lucky enough to land an amazing bunch of classes last spring that helped me start to piece my life together. I also got a job that helped me see deeper into things I had started to see long ago. I was recommended to take an Interpersonal Communication class by my adviser that helped me understand a lot of the things I had recognized growing up but didn’t know how to make sense of. Communication and a lot of the human behavior stuff we talked about just made sense to me and was so incredibly interesting. I had a Sport’s Psychology class that helped me start to make more sense of some of the experiences I had playing sports and gave me a desire to be the best future track coach I could be. I had an institute class where we talked a lot about families and relationships. I also worked with the Boys & Girls Club after school program at the middle school that semester. The job was rough, and I honestly hated having to go to work every day because the kids were so difficult to deal with. Most of the kids came from high risk homes and had a lot of struggles in their lives, so it was really hard for the kids to trust us and allow us into their lives. Among months of daily struggles, I was able to have some powerful experiences talking with two different kids about their lives. One girl opened up to me about dealing with anxiety and depression and some of the issues she faced at school. She amazed me with her strong spirit and uncanny ability to perceive the world. I was touched so deeply by that discussion and wished so badly that the kids would allow me to talk with them about hard things more. I really had to ask myself those questions my mother used to ask me when I was younger, "Why do you think they acted that way?" or "How do you think that makes them feel?" This job made me never want to work with youth again, but also made me want to spend my life helping kids like them.

My parents and others always would offer helpful suggestions for study/career choices. I heard a lot of different ones: law school, physical therapy, counseling, occupational therapy, blah blah blah. I remember pretty much just shrugging every idea off because it just didn’t sound like anything I wanted to do. Some days I would feel like doing one thing and then a few days later it would be something else. But I remember there was a point towards the end of last semester that it just all clicked in my head and just felt right. I remember my mother suggesting being a school counselor previously and thinking that was probably her worst idea yet….. but it eventually just hit me. I needed to be a school counselor. I would get to work in a school like I had long wanted to do and I would get to listen to, counsel with, and connect with PEOPLE on a very personal level, as well as be in a position to coach track and be a role model and mentor while helping develop better athletes. All those years of being deeply empathetic with kids growing up started to make sense, my experience with track and the lessons I learned made sense, my strong desire to connect with people on my mission outside of teaching them the gospel made sense, and I could see all my experiences working with youth leading me to that career. So, I made a plan to finish a degree in Communication Studies and do a minor in Psychology before I do a master's program in School Counseling!

This whole plan was all still new to me. I would even tell people that my plan would possibly change because it was one of those “I finally figured my shiz out but idk because maybe I don’t because I sometimes feel like I am a mess.” But I had moment after moment this summer that made me more and more comfortable with my plans. I went to Washington to sell pest control again this summer. I literally just hate sales, hate business, and literally just hate everything about the job except for one thing…. the occasional incredibly powerful interaction with an individual. Over 99% of the people I met were just whatever. Some were nice, some were rude, some were just average, but there were a number of experiences that really touched me. I remember walking up to an ugly yellow house towards the end of a string of really difficult selling days. I chit chatted with the lady who answered about pest control for a little bit before I gave up and started talking with her about life. About 45 minutes later I was walking out of her house having just learned about her conversion to the church, her mission, her leaving the church, her failed marriage, her struggles with her second (current) marriage and seemingly everything in between. I remember as I walked away just feeling overwhelmed with what just happened and the fact that she trusted me, some random 22 year old door-to-door salesman who she had never met, with some of the most vulnerable parts of her life. I always felt like I was able to have real heartfelt discussion about difficult things on my mission, but I realized that my ability to do so had grown so much after my amazing classes and recent experiences. I felt so much love for her and felt so humbled to have been able to help her talk about and feel comfortable discussing some of the hardest things in her life. I wanted that feeling that I had in that moment to be a part of my everyday life for the rest of my life. I felt that feeling again a number of times throughout the summer as I sat in people’s homes talking about their struggling family, their battle with cancer, or their experiences with God and religion. I prayed every single day this summer that I could be the answer to someone’s prayer even if I knew who that person was or not. Most days I had no idea who it was, but there were a small number that were profound, and those experiences helped me feel confident in what I plan to spend my life doing.

So yeah, there is that. I want to be a school counselor. Its going to be hard and will constantly require me to learn and be broken again and again, but it that means I am able to change lives, so be it. I have been told that I will learn things that I will never have wanted to learn and that I will hear about things that I wish I had never heard about, but I look forward to leaving work everyday with those feelings that have already changed my life so much!

Double Tap..... Triple Trouble

Sup squad. Reed here, obviously. So a little about me in case you didn't know... I grew up in a small-ish town in Idaho called Kuna. It is quite honestly such an awesome place. It was awesome growing up and especially going to school in Kuna because there was never an environment of competition for attention, trying to be cool, or striving for superior social status. Everyone was chill, got along, and respected each other. This showed not only in school, but in everything, including social media. People posted whatever the heck they wanted. Instagram pictures weren't doctored up, people posted about random stuff in their lives, and there was never a competition to see who could get the most followers or likes on their pictures. People just didn't care about that because they knew that Instagram wasn't what made them cool or well known. So let me just tell you that I was in for a grand awakening when I moved to Utah for college and was introduced to a whole new world of Instagram and social media. But everyone is affected by this... not just Utah people.

Yes, I am writing about the poison of social media, but particularly Instagram because it seems to be the most dangerous and toxic of all the platforms. I promise you that I am not trying to demean or belittle anyone, make anyone feel bad, nor am I judging anyone. I am just trying to raise awareness to the real problems that underlie something we are all engaged in. So if you are reading this, please do so with an open and humble mind and think about how this is affecting you. Also, although I am writing this with a focus on young adult Instagram users, the principles apply to all of us no matter our age or what social media we use!

Also, I do want to put out another disclaimer. I do understand that many people use Instagram for many good things. People use it to promote their businesses or this and that. I have a friend who has built her very successful photography business nearly completely through Instagram! It has completely changed her life for the better and she is super successful because of it. And good for her because there is absolutely nothing wrong with that! But guess what? She is in the less than 1%. You and I ain't building no business from Instagram. I also know people who love photography (but may not run a photography business) and use Instagram as a platform to share their work. Again, this is a perfectly healthy thing to do! No problems there unless it starts to affect them in some of the ways I will talk about.

I want to share with you some experiences I have had lately that have led me to write this.....

A couple months ago I had an assignment for my Interpersonal Communications class that called for a 24 hour mediated communication fast. This meant that I chose not to use any sort of communication that was not face-to-face with another person for a full day! I'm sure that doesn't seem too bad to you -- no texting or calling someone, right? But we are literally exposed to mediated forms of communication all day every day. Yes, texting and calling are mediated forms of communication, but even simple things like recipes or settings on an oven are communication through mediated channels. I couldn't look at my phone, look at a book, read any notes, listen to music, OR EVEN LOOK AT A DANG CLOCK!!!

I learned a lot of things through this assignment....

Firstly, I found that we are all living in two different worlds. We are all part of the real world, obviously, but we are also a part of a virtual world. What I found interesting was the fact that even when we are not actively engaged in the virtual world, that virtual world is right in our pockets and, believe it or not, we are still a part of it. The issue I found with this is that we are NEVER present in the real world! Never. I chose to do this assignment on a Sunday, so I spent a few hours at church surrounded by my peers which created an interesting dynamic for me. For one thing, I hadn't paid that much attention in church in seemingly forever. Good heavens. I didn't realize how much I was distracted at church, but that's a different story. I also realized how lonely it was to be the only person in the real world while surrounded by my peers that were only halfway in the real world with me. This isn't to say that I didn't have anyone to talk to, because I talked to people more that day at church than I usually do, but I never felt like anyone was engaged in the present with me. I would be talking to someone and they would at some point look at their dang phone and I would feel an instant disconnect from them. I NEVER had anyone's full attention, and it made me realize how much our connection to the virtual world is pulling us away from our relationships with real people. This occurrence has unofficially been termed "phubbing" which is short for "phone snubbing". One study found that people who use their phones while sharing meals with each other not only took them away from the people physically present with them, but it also made them enjoy their meals less (aka a literal waste of money). Through one follow up experiment they found that those same people that were evaluated using their phones while sharing a meal had less enjoyable face-to-face interactions away from the table as well. In fact, researchers have found that the mere presence of a cell phone in an interaction causes people to feel less connected to each other. They may not even be actively engaged with the device, BUT THE MERE PRESENCE distances people from each other. 

"The humans live in time but the Enemy destines them for eternity.  He (God) therefore, I believe wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present.  For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity… He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Himself) or the Present… Our business is to get them away from the eternal and from the Present…we sometimes tempt a human to live in the past…He does not want men to give the Future their hearts… We do…we want a man hag-ridden by the Future."   -The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis

On the other hand, this assignment took things to the extreme. It was incredibly frustrating to figure out something to do when everyone was entertained by mediated communication. Like, what could I go do when everyone was watching a basketball game? I couldn't go read anything, I couldn't write in a journal, I couldn't call anyone up on the phone... literally nothing. Not even things that were wholesome and safe. I sat there on my butt in the hallway of my apartment doing nothing for like 15 minutes at one point. I felt like I was going crazy. I learned to appreciate many of the resources we have. Phones are great! Lately I have been reaching out to friends of mine that I don't see too often and ask how they're doing, texting people when I think about them or sending texts of appreciation to people. It's been great. My phone has allowed me to build stronger relationships as I have learned to use it in a more wholesome way. More on this in a bit...

I'll move on to my next experience now. For my English class we were assigned an argumentative essay. I thought back to an argumentative speech I gave in high school about how Facebook was the best social media platform, so I thought I would write a funny essay about how Twitter was now the best social media platform. Well, that just wasn't going to work out. So I decided to just write a generic essay about how poisonous social media is, with an emphasis on the culture of Instagram among young adults in Utah. Instagram in Utah is nuts, y'all. And if you are reading this as a young adult in Utah, I don't mean to belittle you or call you out with what I am about to say, but I hope it makes you think about how this is affecting you, because I can promise you it is affecting you. I rewrote the entire essay and turned it in just the other day, and its been a fascinating few days since. 

I will start with a couple things that I learned as I did some reading about the issue. Let me walk through step-by-step of how the whole process of toxicity goes down.

-First off, a young adult will have plans to do something fun with some friends and all along they are planning on getting a "Instagram perfect picture" to post for the occasion.

-Then, they will go out and have their fun (heck, sometimes these fun activities are purely for a cool IG pic), and spend a considerable amount of time trying to get the perfect picture. I kid you not, people will do like 10 takes to find the perfect one.

-This picture will then go through the process of getting perfectly edited, which sometimes takes a considerable amount of time. It has to look perfect. Sometimes like 3 different edits will be done of the picture before the best one is picked.

-Sometimes the posting of this "Instagram perfect picture" will be postponed so that it can be posted at a time of day that more people will be trafficking through Instagram so that they can get more likes.

The whole goal of this "Instagram perfect picture" is to get the most likes. Heck, one time I realized someone deleted a picture after a bit of time because it wasn't getting enough likes! The purpose of most of these pictures isn't to share your life and things your care about, its to get likes. But why?

Its because we crave validation. Validation that people like us and that we are known by others. The reason that we crave these things and feel validated is because when people like our pictures, dopamine is released in our brain. Dopamine is a chemical that is released when you have a triumphant moment in your life. Moments like finding your keys, scoring a winning goal, getting a sale, or getting a good test score. But, dopamine is also what is released when you drink alcohol, intake nicotine, or gamble. As you know, drugs and alcohol bring synthetic happiness that is temporary, and addiction is the result of irresistible cravings for the synthetic happiness that dopamine gives you in these circumstances. We all have an addiction to approval. We crave approval from our parents, family, friend, peers, and associates. When we turn to Instagram for approval and validation of ourselves, we are training our brains to think that the dopamine being released when we see those "likes" is the solution to our happiness. "Likes" on Instagram are literally a drug. It is the same thing as opening up a liquor cabinet and pulling out a bottle of vodka to satisfy that craving. And just like how the alcohol is nothing but a temporary quench, so are those "likes" on that picture. So on the side of the person who posted the picture, this process of obtaining and gaining validation for an "Instagram perfect picture" is bringing synthetic validation telling them that their lives are meaningful and that they are cared for, when in reality its just a drug poisoning the brain.

Similarly, I can almost guarantee you've at one time opened up Instagram within minutes of last opening it, scrolled through the 5 new posts, scrolled through to see if there were any new stories posted, locked your screen, and then did it again less than 10 minutes later. Yo, you're addicted and so prone to needing validation from Instagram that you look for it even when there is very little chance it will provide you any. But hey, I've done that countless times so you ain't alone.

I'll tell you what, REAL VALIDATION is seeing a friend on campus, seeing them smiling at your presence, hugging you, and wishing you a good day. REAL VALIDATION is receiving a text from your friend who you haven't seen in a while letting you know they're thinking about you. REAL VALIDATION is having personal conversations with a loved one about important things in life. REAL VALIDATION is serving others and seeing them happy because of it. REAL VALIDATION is praying and asking God if he is proud of who you are and feeling peaceful and full of love. REAL VALIDATION IS NOT GETTING NEW FOLLOWERS OR LIKES ON INSTAGRAM. 

Now, on the other side of things, people will see that posted picture and they are affected as well. They see the beautiful world that is portrayed and they see the happy people and their perfect relationships. Images carry what researchers call visual primacy and warranting value. So, when it comes to social media, Instagram carries a much more impactful effect than a tweet or Facebook post because it is a visual picture. So when a photo becomes "warranted" (or gets lots of "likes" from other people) it becomes more believable and the brain files it as something as real and true. So, these Instagram perfect images are literally creating a perception in the viewers brain that life HAS to be like that to be good and happy.

Did you know that those who reported to spend more time on social media are found to be 2.7 times more likely to suffer from depression than those who spend less time on social media??? TWO-POINT-SEVEN TIMES MORE LIKELY!!! It may not seem like much, but think about yourself being at nearly THREE TIMES the risk of suffering something you really don't have to. It's your choice! (I am very sensitive to clinical depression and all the many people that suffer from it. If you or a loved one suffers from that, this issue is not related to you and your struggle. If you find yourself feeling depressed because of social media, please take steps to help yourself. Please tell people you love, get help, and work your way to a healthier place.)

I was talking about this issue with a friend yesterday, and she shared something with me that is such a perfect example of this. She told me that at one point she started following a lot of "Instagram famous" people, particularly a lot of Utah "mommy/fashion bloggers". She said that as time went on her self-esteem got worse and worse and she thought horribly of herself because she was always so exposed to these "perfect Instagram lives". She decided that she would unfollow all of those people and immediately she started to gain back her self-esteem and love for herself. Heck, she decided to delete her Instagram app on the spot as we were talking about this together!

I also deleted my Instagram and Twitter apps a few nights ago. Instagram because of the trap I was falling into, and Twitter because it was just a time waster. However, I do love Twitter because people show their true lives on there. It is quite refreshing. Anyway, it hasn't been more than a couple days since I got rid of all that junk and I can honestly say that I have not loved myself this much in a long time! I tend to not struggle very much with self-esteem, but it was completely normal for me to compare myself to others on Instagram all day long and take some hits. Along with that, my relationships feel so much more real too! Even though its just been a couple of days, everybody is now just a real-life friend and they don't exist in my virtual world of friends anymore. On top of that, real-life validation is much more frequent and relevant. I see people on campus and have super positive interactions just in passing, and they are 100% my real life friend, and it fills me with authentic validation and love. I also have been so much more aware of random people and their emotions. I am aware of people who are lonely, stressed, or sad, and empathize with them, even if its from a distance. I reach out to people more often and let them know that I love them and care for them. Although I am still a selfish 22 year old young man, I feel more selfless than I ever have since my mission. I have had so much real validation from real relationships and serving others. Also, I have been talking to more people wherever I go. When I walk into class and everyone else has their faces shoved into their screens scrolling through pictures, I sit down and talk to the person next to me. Yo, I got friends in all my classes and it is sa-weet! To be honest I have been practicing not sitting on my phone before class all semester long, but I no longer even have the temptation to close myself off to uplifting personal interactions with others. IT HAS BEEN SO GREAT PEOPLE! 

I plan on having Instagram and Twitter deleted for at least a week before I download them again. But when I get them back I have a plan to use them in a healthy manner by limiting my time spent scrolling, never comparing myself with others, and not using it to seek validation. I fully intend to delete them again should I start feeling pulled back into the trap. I do still have my Facebook app because I use that mainly for news, and I also kept Snapchat because I actually get to communicate with people in a healthy way on there. So yeah, there's that in case you were wondering. Also, I downloaded my Instagram app to share this but will be deleting it again right after I share this.

My whole purpose in this is to bring awareness to the issues we face with social media today. I honestly don't mean to demean anyone or make you feel bad because let's face it, we are all part of it. I am included. And I decided to do something about the problem I face everyday because I want to live the best and happiest life I can.

God bless you as you are honest with yourself and try to evaluate anything you need to change to live a happier and healthier life. It's not easy to change, but its possible. Let me know any thoughts you have, experiences you have, or any questions you have. And if you need somebody to help you make a change please reach out to me or someone you love! I would be more than willing to help you in whatever way I can! DM me (I won't see it immediately but I will eventually), text me, call me, Snapchat me (@reedalolo), or whatever. I want to hear your experiences!

Some sources I used for my essay and that I got a lot of my info from:

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865652960/How-social-media-can-make-us-question-our-moral-values.html

http://universe.byu.edu/2016/10/11/health-officials-say-social-media-can-affect-students-mental-health1/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nedx5FYUDe0

http://time.com/5216853/what-is-phubbing/

Track Life

It was May 2nd, 2014 at Kuna High School and I had finally ran a race that I was pleased with after a season of frustration and defeat. I went into the 4A District III track meet with a lot to prove as I was the defending district and state champion in the 400m, yet had been beaten consistently by two other athletes from my district all season long. However, I had confidence that my training would lead me to breaking out and establishing myself as the best once again. And I did it. Not my best race, but good enough to get back on top. After defending my title in the 400m it was time to prepare myself to my next final, the 200m. After recovering from a grueling 400 just an hour or so earlier, I walked out onto the track and set my starting blocks. Still in my sweats, I got myself loaded into the blocks for a practice start to make sure I was ready to race. I got settled in, raised my hips into the set position, and took a few hard strides out of the blocks. As I turned around to walk back to my blocks I felt a pain in my ankle. Nothing major, but uncomforting nonetheless. But, I had two back-to-back races to run so I told myself it was no big deal and just ran my little heart out.

400m Final @ Districts senior year

7 days later I was on the track at Boise State ready to run my first race, the medley relay. At districts the week before our relay team had ran a full second under the state record and ran the fastest time in that state by a large margin, so naturally we were big favorites to bring home the title and a new state record. Usually once I step onto the track for a race I am confident and expect myself to run well. However, this day was different. You see, what I thought was an insignificant pain in my left ankle turned out to be debilitating to my running. Heck, just two days before state I still couldn't run at all because of the sharp pain, so I spent the entire week leading up to state not being able to run. Thankfully modern medicine is pretty sweet and a healthy dose of cortisone whisked away the pain barely in time for me to run, however not running all week long was definitely not ideal. So obviously I did not feel my usual confidence standing there on the track waiting to get passed the baton for my leg of the relay. As my teammate approached me everything went wrong. I left too late, didn't take off hard enough, and sure enough the baton went tumbling to the ground and we didn't finish the race. Well, that race didn't go as planned, I then ran a slow time in the 400, then I ran a crappy 200, then the 4x400 relay didn't go as planned. Sure, I walked away with two silver medals, but I felt greatly unsatisfied and like a failure. That meet was my last chance to do something big and run to the potential that I knew I had, and that all fell through the cracks because of a small little ankle injury.

Somehow my mother got a picture right as the baton was falling to the track... good timing (or bad timing?)!

Fast forward 3.5 years and I have set out to not let my track career end with disappointment and be left feeling like I never fully tapped into my full potential. Last semester after I got back from my mission I got in and talked to the sprint coach for the track team here at Utah State and expressed my desire to walk on and fight for a spot on the team and he gladly welcomed me into joining the team to fight for a roster spot for the competitive season that starts in January. So at the beginning of this school year I started my journey of adding a new uplifting chapter to my career to not be left feeling unsatisfied.

Unfortunately for me, I dealt with a foot injury throughout the summer that kept me from preparing myself for the coming fall training and playing a bit of catch up with the kids that hadn't just taken a 3+ year break from training. However, I still jumped in earlier this fall with nothing to lose. Sure, my fitness level may have been a bit behind, but luckily we worked pretty slowly into our training so I never felt like I was lagging too much. Even as our workouts started to amp up a bit I was always very surprised with my ability to keep up and run workouts right there with the rest of the guys and I began to build my confidence that I could run Division I track and be an asset to my team.

My foot had gotten much better and I had gotten to the point where I nearly didn't have any pain at all. The only pain I would ever have would be just a little bit or soreness after practice. I had probably nearly a month of having minimal to no pain before all of a sudden one Monday my plantar fasciitis decided to flare up with a vengeance! I had never felt even close to that type of pain in my foot throughout the 4 months I had been dealing with the injury so it was so strange for it to go from painless to nearly crippling basically over the weekend. My foot hasn't been the same since. I found a pre-practice treatment routine and a tape job that helps me not have much pain for my workouts, but I usually have quite a bit of pain after I get done with my workout, so I had to find a post-practice routine to help relieve that pain as well. Not an ideal situation, however I have been able to practice everyday and have been able to keep getting stronger and faster.

This is my trainer Megan. She seriously keeps me running through my daily pain and I cannot thank her enough!!!

One of the things that I missed most about track was being a part of a team. I realized right after I finished my last race at the state track meet my senior year of high school that I was going to miss my teammates and the relationships I built through track more than anything. Coming onto a new track team was a bit different. It was my first time being around all these new people, and a lot of our workout group is freshman, so it took a while for us to come together and become what I was used to. However, one thing that is so special about my team is the fact that even though most us are competing for a roster spot, everybody is each others biggest cheerleaders. Every single workout is filled with high fives and motivational chants which are honestly so incredibly helpful when you are about to pass-out and you are about to step up to the line again. I have never been on a team that has come together like we have here at Utah State to help each other improve and get better, even though we are each others competition.

This past Wednesday we had our annual Blue & White Inter-squad Meet. Not only was this our first chance to race, but this was our last chance to make an impression because cuts were to come just two days later on Friday. I had been feeling a bit unconfident in my chances of making it past cuts for a couple weeks leading up to the meet for some reason. I fell a little bit behind in a couple workouts and for some reason lost a bit of my confidence. So I knew I needed to show up and run a good race. Well, I did just that! I ran extremely well and actually ran a lot faster than everyone except for two really solid returners on the team who I ran about the same time as. Not only did I run well but racing for the first time in 3.5 years felt SO GOOD! I hadn't felt that rush and competitive spirit in such a long time and it made me so excited to start racing in January! I felt a lot of new confidence in my chances of making the team and was looking forward to competing for Utah State.

There I was Friday morning sitting in English class when I felt my phone buzz. "Oh no!" I thought. For some reason I just knew it was going to be a text from my coach, which would not be a good sign. Earlier in the week I had heard that coach would only meet with those people getting cut, so if you didn't get a text to go meet with coach you just show up to practice that day and that was the sign that you made it. Well, sure enough I pulled my phone out of my pocket and saw the text from my coach asking for me to come it to talk with him. I couldn't get in to visit with him for another few hours, so I had the privilege of sitting through two classes and some more time knowing that I was about to get cut before it actually happened. Once I finally made it to the offices my coach took me to a small meeting room and told me that they were cutting me from the team. Honestly I think it was harder for him than me. He talked about how his whole career is based on helping athletes and doing whatever he can to help them reach their potential, so it is extra hard for him to do the opposite of that to someone. It was hard for me to sit there and see his eyes begin to tear up a little bit and I could tell that he was deeply hurt to cut someone like me who came and gave it everything he had day in and day out.

Obviously it was extremely difficult for me. To know that I spent hours and hours every week in the training room, on the track, and in the weight room for three months only to be told I was not going to be on the roster was a pretty tough pill to swallow. It hurts when you are told you aren't good enough when you have put your heart and soul into getting better every single day. But, I was alright. I am so incredibly proud of what I did. Division I track is no joke and workouts were HARD some days. Just thinking about the fact that I came in after not training for 3.5 years and kept up each workout and came back day after day makes me smile and feel so dang proud of myself. Its honestly hard for me to describe how I feel because its hard to explain the personal growth that I went through over the last few months. I feel like an athlete again and have finally begun feeling satisfied after grueling workouts and felt a sense of purpose in my training. I feel competitive again and love working towards physical accomplishments. I remember praying at night about a week or so ago and having a few tears thanking the Lord just for the opportunity to have spent the last few months as a part of the Utah State track family and for all its done for me. Ultimately, at this point in my life I don't NEED track. I am thankful for the time I spent away on my mission learning what my life was really about. If I would have gotten cut from the team right after high school I would have been destroyed, but now I realize that my life has purpose and I have fulfillment in things outside of track. It doesn't define me like it seemingly once did and I am able to move on with faith and hope that it will end up being what is best for me in the greater plan that God has for me.

So, what now? What about not wanting to leave track feeling unsatisfied and not reaching my potential? I have committed myself to not quit until I am able to set a PR (personal record). Personally I think that even just after 3 months of training after a few years off I could run pretty close to as fast as I did in high school, so I am committed to keep training on my own and competing in a couple of indoor meets as an unattached athlete up in Boise come January/February. I plan to run a PR in the 400 as well as the 200 and then most likely hang up the spikes and call it a career. I honestly just can't see myself wanting to train any longer than then. I worked out Friday all by myself after I got cut and it was brutal. It is so hard to hit your times and push yourself that last stretch of an interval when you are all alone and tired. The mental aspect of training by yourself is excruciating and I just don't know if I can keep fighting that battle longer than a couple months. My coach did leave the option open to come back next year and fight for a spot again, but I do not know what my life will be like 9 months from now. The odds are slim, but I am not ruling out trying again next year.

I am sure there are many schools out there that would love to have me come run for them. I don't think it would take long to find a coach willing to get me on their roster. However, coming out of high school I made the decision that I was going to go somewhere that I wanted to go to school and then see if track would work out. So, I decided that I wanted to come here to Utah State. If track worked out, cool, and if it didn't, I was somewhere that I wanted to be without track. Unfortunately, I picked a school that actually had a legit track team that is competitive in a pretty decent conference, so I may have kind of shot myself in the foot there, but I don't regret it. Even though I have said that I would not leave Utah State previously and he knew where I stood, my dad reminded me when I called him to tell him the news that there would always be opportunities to run somewhere else if I decided that I really wanted to run, and I didn't even think for a second about transferring somewhere else. I have found a new home here and I ain't leaving it until I have to!

If you are still reading, cool. I was hoping to make this shorter than my previous posts, and I think it is juuuuuuuust a tad shorter, but still too long. So sorry.

What's Up, Homies?

Hey y'all… for some reason I feel like sharing a bit of a life update. I am in an English class right now and we are always talking about writing and I often think about writing blog posts, but I just don’t ever think about it outside of those 5 seconds sitting in class. But, here she goes. Btw... there are pics at the end. Thought I would let you know to throw some suspense in there. 

So I don’t know how many of y’all know what I was up to this past summer. I told people where I was going and what I was doing but I was pretty quiet on social media sites (outside of snapchat) throughout the summer so if you weren’t told you may have never been informed. So, I signed on as a salesman for a pest control company. After changing my mind more than once about where I was going to go to sell door-to-door I finally settled on going to Nashville for the summer. I was pretty darn jacked to go out to Tennessee and spend my summer out there. After school got out the first week of May I got to go home to Kuna for maybe a couple days before I had the great blessing of driving ALL THE WAY to Nashville by myself. Driving 25+ hours by yourself isn’t necessarily fun, however it is quite relaxing and gives you great time to ponder about life and enjoy the company of your thoughts and my boy Jesus. I left on Saturday evening and drove to my sister Elsina’s house in Utah, then got up on Sunday and drove 16 straight hours through the awful wasteland of southern Wyoming and Nebraska all the way to Kansas City where I rolled in at 12:30am, and then drove another 8+ hours to Nashville on Monday. Talk about a TRIP! Thankfully on Monday I had a teammate who was caught up with me in Kansas City driving in front of me with a radar detector, so we cut off a substantial amount of time while safely avoiding any sort of speeding violation! But still, it was awfully long.

We got to Nashville and it was sick. It seemed like a pretty rad place and we were all excited to get out to work! Selling door-to-door is an interesting job. I remember my first couple weeks were basically just a rerun of the beginning of my mission. When you first get out on your mission you basically are just lost and have no idea how to talk to people about the gospel and have moments where you just crash and burn. Well, that’s exactly the same beginning to door-to-door sales! My first couple weeks I had people all day long tell me something that just had me at a loss for words and caused me to just say, “Well, I hope you have a wonderful day!” and walk off their doorstep! It was basically every door actually… not gonna lie. Another thing about the early days of a mission is that each and every day is sooooooo long and you are just counting down the minutes until you are done. Same thing with sales. And then you get home and you realize that you are going to hit the sack soon and just have to wake up and do it all over again the next day. There is just no break!!!! It was literally a nightmare that you can’t escape! At least a mission is uplifting…. but there ain’t no upliftment with sales. It just breaks you and makes you really think about what you are doing with your life. However, you start to get in the flow of the job and it just becomes life for you. Is it ever fun? HECK NO. But its bearable and becomes slightly less of a nightmare. The worst is when you literally start having nightmares about selling pest control! I remember starting to have dreams about selling that crap and freaking out because I felt like I couldn’t escape it or get a break from it. Even after you get into the flow of it, it still seems like a living hell sometimes. Quite honestly it was the most difficult mental challenge I have ever had to face. Not to go into details about what all went on to protect people and the company… but we were placed into a terrible situation with little hope to succeed from the get go. Plus, Nashville turned out to be a very difficult market to sell in. So it was honestly just brutal trying to sell day after day. However, I am thankful for the opportunity I had to go out there. I learned a ton about myself and what I want in life. One thing I had to continually practice was the skill of overcoming mental blocks. There were days when I hadn’t sold at all in a couple days and I would be out knocking doors on a muggy evening just dead tired physically, mentally, and emotionally with seemingly no hope to sell an account after already knocking for 7 hours in that neighborhood that day. But in those moments I had to make a decision. Will I quit now and give in to my weakness? Or will I keep going to prove to myself that I can overcome my mental barrier? I would usually keep going. And then when that happened I would usually get really really really close to a sale but the stupid person just wouldn’t sign my stupid ipad!!!!! When that happens when you are already just broken down and it is the worst thing ever. Sometimes I would just go out off their lawn, crouch down on bended knees, rip my hat off, rub my hands through my hair and say a few choice words quietly before I stagger on to the next door. It was honestly so frustrating to work for probably over a dozen hours working your butt off and to not have made a single penny for your labor only to get SOOOO DANG CLOSE but still get nothing. It was far more emotionally taxing and difficult than anything I ever experienced on my mission. I honestly can’t thinkt of ever being as frustrated with how difficult missionary work was in West Texas than I would get quite often selling pest control. But, luckily I was a pro at getting last door sales! I can’t even count the amount of times that it was getting dark and I knew it was time to go pick up my car partners but had just one more door to knock before I called it quits and sold the person. It got to a point where my team lead would text me at like 8:00 with only about 15 mins to go and would tell me to work my last door magic to spank in a sale! And its funny that I usually would text him 20 minutes later telling him that I sold somebody on my last door. I guess I was rewarded for my hard work sometimes!

After working for a couple months I started to think more seriously about what was best for me and my life at the time. It was clear that my summer was not going as hoped for (as was nobody else’s on my team) and I was facing some other challenges as well. I had made the decision and was given the opportunity to run track this year here at Utah State. I had taken a bit of a break from training and was ready to get back into it about a month into my summer. However, literally the day after I committed myself to start training again I started to feel pain in my foot. I thought nothing of it that day until I got out of bed the next morning to some good stiffness and soreness. I immediately knew I got hit with a case of plantar fasciitis. Sure enough, I got into the podiatrist later that week and my self diagnosis was confirmed. So for those of you unfamiliar, your plantar fascia is the tendon that runs along the bottom of your foot from your heal to the ball of your foot. Sometimes because of this reason or that reason the tendon gets inflamed right at the heal and it tightens up the tendon along your midfoot and leads to scar tissue build up along your foot and up into your arch. Usually you can get it under control pretty quickly, but then you will deal with it on and off for a long extended period of time. Well, as a door-to-door salesman I was kind of on my feet all day every day so I could never really let it rest. I got in to see a podiatrist as soon as I could once I felt the pain and ended up receiving a series of 3 steroid shots into my heal that did absolutely nothing besides dull the pain for a few days. So there was a waste of about $500. Shoutout to Mom and Dad for picking up those payments. But after more than a month or so of dealing with irritation in my foot and not being able to train I knew I had to seriously contemplate whether or not to leave and get home to rest.

On top of the issues with my foot I was dealing with many other unfortunate circumstances that added much to my decision. I won’t go into any of the other dealings I had in front of me to protect everyone involved, but I was in sort of a mess. I had many long phone calls with my parents while sitting in the picnic area of my apartment complex out in the muggy heat of Nashville listening to the birds and crickets chirp and the frogs croak late at night. Long story short, I decided one Saturday that I was done and ready to go home and that I would be leaving the next day to start the LOOONG drive home. I was not looking forward to having the necessary conversations I had to have and the phone calls I had to make. But luckily everyone was very understanding and supportive of my decision, which was a HUGE relief after hearing about what some other kids went through when they decided to go home. I can definitely say that just trying to be a cooperative and understanding person and portraying good character through everything throughout the summer helped me a bunch when I decided to go home. It seemed to lighten the news a bit for everyone. But anyway, I felt so incredibly relieved when I finally made my decision. I felt the weight of the world just lift off my shoulders and float right on away the second I made up my mind. It’s almost like Jesus is real or something.

So just when you thought that I had my big break and got away from everything, let me tell you the consequences. Well, as a salesman that is paid off of strictly commission on accounts that are paid throughout the year, I didn’t get paid on everything upfront. For each of my accounts sold I would only receive a certain amount upfront and then the rest on backend checks later in the year. I was basically able to pay for my living expenses out in Nashville with my upfront pay, so I was basically left with nothing when I decided to come home, and by coming home before I finished my contract I forfeited all of my backend commission which was thousands of dollars. I definitely accounted for this throughout my process of deciding to come home, but I ultimately had to jump ship and cut my losses and become friends with the lovely student loans. It kinda sucks when you have plans to make enough money to be able to pay for school and everything for the school year upfront in cash and have enough to last you the rest of the year…. and then find yourself sitting there with only a few weeks until school and having less than $100 in your bank account (and that’s because your parents bail you out to help you get home because you have no money to pay for gas or anything). So I was super happy when my student loans came through and had money to pay for my life.

The rest of my summer was fun and such an emotional and mental relief. I was able to get away from the toxicity of my job in Nashville and was able to let myself unwind and figure life out for a few weeks. I was able to get into a trusted physical therapist who I had worked with before to get my foot actually treated. I was able to spend time with some of my friends and actually have a bit of enjoyable time to end my summer. I remember certainly not feeling like myself towards the end of my stay in Nashville. I had a friend tell me that he saw a picture of me and thought that I looked empty and not like the Reed he knew and almost reached out to me to tell me to get out of there (he told me this a few weeks after). I even remember looking at myself in my car mirror before I walked into my sister’s house in Utah on my drive home and hoping that she wouldn’t notice my empty and worn appearance. It took about a week or so of being home to feel like myself again, but I got there.

So here I am at school. Life is wonderful……. yet super confusing at the same time. I am kind of in a limbo state right now where I am still in a position of uncertainty about many things and yet starting to figure life out and what the future holds. One of the biggest things for me is the idea of being almost 22 years old and still having no direct course I want to take in life. I sit in class most days just hating general education and wanting to get on with school and my education, but then thinking how I don’t know what I want to study/pursue as a career. So that’s been fun. Still working on that. But sadly it seems to be getting worse every day so maybe I am not working on it well enough!

Like I said earlier, I am running track here. The boys team doesn’t have very many people returning (especially in the sprints/hurdles group) so there are a lot of us freshman (out of high school or rm’s) that are all here trying to earn a spot. Not many of us have a guaranteed spot so we are all trying to prove ourselves. I will say that it has been a bit of a challenge. After not being a competitive athlete for a few years it has been difficult to get myself to want to push myself physically like a high performing athlete again and have a competitive edge. I remember in high school I would complete a workout and feel satisfaction for having pushed myself and knowing I was getting better. However when I started training recently I just felt tired and worn out from my workout. It really made me question if I wanted to continue on with track or not. I felt like I had just lost the spark and that I just needed to move on in life. We are starting with only being allotted 8 hours of workouts a week and I feel like its just so time consuming….. and we haven’t even started our allotted 20 hour weeks. So I started with having some doubtful thoughts about it all even from a time perspective. However, we are in our third week now and I am starting to get into it much more. I am starting to feel that satisfaction and drive again. It definitely helps actually working out with other people as well. It had been forever since I was able to practice every day with people to push me and run with. All the workouts I had done since high school had been solo and it is a very different feeling running alongside others. Which speaking of working out with others, I am able to keep up far better than I thought I would. After dealing with injuries for so much of the time that I have been home from my mission I came into this school year feeling as out of shape as ever. But somehow my body has just pushed right along and been able to do the workout and keep up with everyone with ease. Our workout have honestly been fairly light and nothing too intense, but still. I feel strong and capable and have a lot of optimism for my ability to earn a spot on the team!

I have still been dealing with injuries, however. I legitimately spend more time in the training room than I do at our workout (not including weights). My foot was still bothering me for a while. I had been getting treatment on it a few days a week after practice up unit later last week. We decided to let it try to do some healing on its own because it has been feeling better, and I have hardly had any irritation at all the last few workouts. I credit that to my diligence doing my exercises every day to help it heal and strengthen! Right as practices were starting I was starting to feel some pain in my hip flexor, which seems to be a pretty typical thing for me. I have dealt with that basically my whole athletic career. I then started having IT band issues at the beginning of last week but I have been diligent in making sure I get it rolled out and treated after practice. Ugh, it just seems to be one thing after the other. And this is all on top of my months of recovery after tearing an adductor muscle after I got home from my mission. But I figure that it’s all just part of the gig. I feel like being injured comes with being a college athlete so I can expect more in the future (although I am really hoping to get healthy and stay healthy)! Anyway, so that’s that!

But, life is just fun. I thoroughly enjoy being here at Utah State and would highly recommend it to anyone and everyone! It is just the place to be. I love my roommates, friends, and everyone else that I am surrounded by. Utah State just pulls in quality people and has such a positive and friendly atmosphere that tops any other university in the area along with such an awesome culture that makes life so incredibly great while attending. If you are in college and not attending Utah State……. you need to transfer and get your buns here asap. You will never regret it!

God bless ya!

The Nashville North team at The Lost Cajun... SUPER YUMMY but not enough food for what you pay!

Sometimes you just have to entertain yourself while on the doors. Pretty sure I remember the dude that lives there come look through the window as I took this picture. Kinda awkward but I had no shame.

I swear on my life that Carrie Underwood drove past me right here at this exact location. Best moment of my life.

A "bucket" sale is when you lower your prices past a certain point. We were only allowed a certain percentage of our sales to be in the bucket. But on free bucket day, we could bottom out our prices and not have them go into our bucket! I spanked in 4 that day (but 2 of them cancelled).....

When your team lead takes everyone to the apartment pool instead of working for the first part of the day you get all the relaxing you can get. Yes, I got super sunburned.

J-Crane had a spider bite... or ingrown hair... or some other sort of growth... still not sure. Good night.

The best picture I got of the Nashville sky line. Wish I could have gotten a better one.

Saw Carry Underwood live at the Grand Ole Opry......... I still get the feels thinking about that night.

4th of July in downtown Nashville was nuts! Literally over 200,000 people in a very small area!

Nobody was ready for the picture except for Logan and Chad. We had a good time downtown!

From the roof of a building during the CMA Music Fest weekend.

Bike riding with Ridge was a good way to enjoy the end of summer!

We were just too dang lit for the 80's dance.

Julia and I met at a dance party and run into each other all the time whenever dancing and a party are combined.... very few people go as hard as us.

I guess Peter was the only one that made the frame... I could have sworn more people were in this pic.

Some of my homies at the first home football game!

Getting Home/Life at Home

Hey there, its just me again. This whole 3 part post thing is a bust, and I probably could have told you that when I told you I would be doing it. I was going to do one each Sunday but then last Sunday I was lazy and decided not to write because, well... I didn't feel like it. But, I decided I would give it a go today. (I wrote this intro exactly two months ago.... turns out I didn't give it a full go. But here I go again trying to make this thing happen.)

I was going to write a whole post about flying home, but because the 3 part post is now a 2 part post I will just write briefly about it. I had always looked forward to the moments that I would have way up in the sky flying home after my service had ended. I looked forward to the hours of pondering and reflecting what in the world had just happened. I assumed that the experience would truly be once in a lifetime. Well, it was once in a lifetime, because, well… I definitely won’t be making a plane ride home after two years as a proselyting missionary ever again. However, it wasn’t quite what I thought it would be like. I guess I need to stop expecting certain events to be a certain way, but it just wasn’t quite like I thought it would be. I thought I would be extremely sentimental and in a deep stupor of thought for the entire thing. However, I hardly cried. Once I went through security in Lubbock I seemed to be in this odd inbetweener stage if emotion. I was so so sad to leave, but yet I was ready to just get home. So my sentimentality was numbed by my readiness to get home, and my readiness to get home was numbed by my sentimentality of leaving Texas. I did, however, really enjoy flying over the north part of my mission (which I never served in) and thinking about the great land that was part of the Texas Lubbock Mission. At first sight West Texas is just about the ugliest piece of land you could find, but over the course of time I started to find great beauty in it. I literally can’t get enough of looking out over the Caprock that Lubbock sits on and look at the sky expanding over the horizon. Ugh, so amazing. You’d have to see it to understand. Anyway, I don’t mean to make anyone jealous because they’ve never been to West Texas so I will go back to my plane ride. My ride from Denver to Boise hit me in the feels a little more than Lubbock to Denver. As I walked through the gate to get to the airplane I nearly broke down in tears, it hit me out of nowhere. I guess I realized that I was boarding my flight that would take me to my final destination. It was apparently very overwhelming for me. Once on the plane I met a few people behind me that were ministers…… I guess some things weren’t getting left behind in Texas. Ahhh, just like old times. I was well trained for this interaction after serving in the buckle of the Bible Belt. Tore it up. All you gotta do is be overly nice to them and thank them for their service and you’ve just won. Not that it’s a competition, but being a Mormon missionary automatically gets you put into a position to get “observed” real easily. Not like an unrighteous observation, but I always wanted to make super positive impressions on ecclesiastical leaders of other denomination because they noticed us and what we did more than others. If I could give them a positive impression of myself, they would have a positive impression on the church that I represented on my nametag, and we’d be one step closer to religious unity among the 7,000,000 different denominations among the people I served. Large task, but I think I did my part in trying to spread common appreciation and love. Anyway, that has nothing to do with my plane ride. There was another lady on our row that we talked to a little bit (we meaning another missionary and myself). She was very nice and she would make comments about how excited our families must be and how crazy our lives were about to get. None of the people around us were members of the church, and they didn’t know too much about us missionaries. So they were all very surprised to hear about the fact that we hadn’t seen our families for two years. So they all had an eye on us and our emotions knowing the circumstances. I felt a lot of love from them! Before I knew it we were in the Treasure Valley and making our descent. I noticed a nice large neighborhood and thought that it was a part of east Boise. As I looked closer I notices a couple landmarks that looked familiar, and then right as it went past my window I realized that it was Kuna!!!! Sure enough, we started making the turn to set ourselves up to land! Seeing Kuna got me freaking a bit. But then I got an aerial view of Boise…. HOLY COW. I hadn’t seen anything like that in years (literally)! I saw a city of trees (some of which were changing colors) and get this….. MOUNTAINS!!!!!! I honestly didn’t think they were real for like, the first week home. No way. Not real. Must be some sort of illusion or something. Bull. But sure enough, they are still there today so I must have been wrong. We landed and everyone around me was just basically staring at me, or so I felt. I walked off the plane and walking through the gate got everything going. Here I was, just minutes away from the big arrival. I was trying to hold back tears as long as possible. I decided to sit down on a bench and take minute to think and to pray. I remember sitting there with some tears in my eyes looking at everyone walking by. One of the ladies that I had talked to on the plane walked by and we made eye contact for a few seconds. She gave me a little smile and kept walking. I don’t think I will ever forget that moment. I don’t know why, but that moment is still sharp in my mind. It’s one of those things that I will remember forever and cherish. I have a few of those small moments right there in my mind. Sometimes small simple interactions with people have the most lasting impression. Anyway, I said a little prayer and started my walk through the terminal to go see my family. Crazy stuff, man. I will leave that moment to your imagination. I won’t even try to talk about the reunion. I don’t know how to put that all into words. It was nice. Weird, but quite lovely.

I remember a moment on the drive home that will last with me forever as well. We were driving down Meridian Road after exiting the freeway, and I was looking over at the Kendall car dealership on the corner of Meridian and Overland and realizing that I was home and that I was ACTUALLY home. Up until then it was just like another transfer in my head. A very very different kind of transfer, but a transfer nonetheless. But I remember in that moment realizing that there would be no zone conference the next week, no morning sports the next morning, no knocking on doors that night, nothing. It was OVER. DONE. It hurt. Hurt real bad. But I just went on and was happy to be home, I guess. I remember driving through Kuna and feeling like I never left. I thought it would be weird to drive through my hometown, but it seemed just… regular, I guess. We stopped at Enrique’s Mexican Restaurant in Kuna for some grub on the way home, and we got our food and I remembered that it was weird to pray over your food in Idaho! In Texas you’d go out to eat and see people all over bowing their head and praying together before they ate. But guess what? You ain’t in Texas no more, Elder Ericson! Lame. I had the same experience getting home that I did driving through Kuna. I walked through the door into my house, and it felt like I had been their just a day or two previous. I was a little taken back. It all just makes me realize that my mission was really just a life of itself. It was two years long (which is quite some time for a 20 year old) yet it’s weird to think that it all happened. It was there and now it’s not. Sometimes I wonder if it even happened. I am a different person because of it and my life is much different now, but it’s like it never happened.

Probably the most emotional part of my day was later in the evening when I got released. I cried answering some questions from the stake presidency and as he released me, but the heavy hitter was the drive home. I cried for like 15 minutes straight after leaving that place. I just sat in the back seat of the car looking out the window with tears flowing. I was devastated to not be a missionary anymore. You don’t realize what it means to be a missionary when you first get called and set-apart, and then over the course of your mission you gain a gradual understanding of what it means. But since the growth of your understanding is directly parallel to your time spent as a missionary, you don’t really realize that you understand because it’s just normal life for you. But with my understanding, having the mantel taken away made me realize just how much I knew about what being a missionary was and how much I loved it. It was the worst. I didn’t want life to go on for a moment. I knew that life had so much in store for me and I was excited for that, but for a moment I wanted nothing more than to go back to my life of being a missionary. I still feel that way sometimes. When I think about what I could do as a missionary if I could go back and the life that I miss so much I sometimes wish life wouldn’t have moved on. But, I am thankful for the life I have now and all that I learned as a missionary that is helping me live a wonderful and amazing life now and for years to come!

So, I just took a two month break from this blog post. I guess I finally decided to finish what I started. What really has gotten me lately is when I hear about people keeping journals and I think to how awesome it is to go back and read my mission journals, but then thinking that I have no documentation of what life was like after my mission. So this in essence is my excuse for not writing in my journal. I would really love to be a good journal writer, but it just is so hard to do it, am I right? You know the struggle, I’m sure.

Anyway, I guess I’ll pick back up with this pup where I left off. I don’t really know where to start. It’s literally been two months since I last worked on this. So here we go…..

Life as a non-missionary has been great so far. The first few weeks after returning home were super wonderful. It is so wonderful to see people for the first time in seemingly forever and feeling their love and appreciation for your service. Every day seemingly I would see people and be greeted with a big hug and have such vibes of happiness sent my way. It very much so made me feel like a successful missionary. However, one problem was that I had the EXACT SAME conversation with every single person for like three weeks. “Oh my gosh!!! Reed (which was weird to be called Reed)!!!! So good to see you! How was your mission?”

“Oh man! It was the greatest thing ever!”

“How was Texas?”

“Oh man! It was the greatest thing ever!”

“How’s being home?

“Oh man! Its super weird and I hate the fact that I’m home half the time, but it truly is good to be home!”

--Awkward Silence--

“Well, it’s good to see ya, Reed! Welcome home!”

Aaaaaannnnddddd after three weeks of nothing but that exact same conversation I lost all ability to talk to people. I spent two years learning to be a phenom at talking to people and it was gone just like that. Seriously, after I got over the period of having that conversation I literally had no idea how to talk to people like a normal person. Lol it was the worst! Talk about a punch to the gut going hero to zero (yes, I know that is the opposite of the saying). But after a while of extreme application of the Atonement, I learned how to talk to people again… at least I think I did. I guess time will tell. On a side note, I talked on the phone the other day to a couple old fellas that I visited a ton in one of my areas, and I felt like I was tearing that conversation up and being the best former missionary ever. For some reason I can’t do that with normal people, but with people that I met as a missionary I can still chat it up like nobodies business. I’ll get there… one day.

Another fun thing about those early days of being home was trying to apply the principles I learned as a missionary to normal life. I am extremely thankful for a mission president who taught us about missionary conduct in a way that helped us realize that we weren’t following rules, but we were implementing principles that could be applied to any life setting. While discussing the topic of mission rules/principles at a meeting once we talked about how we in the Texas Lubbock Mission didn’t follow any “mission rules” but rather we apply principles. A missionary said something that I have written on the front page of my missionary handbook, “Mission rules end when you go home. Principles never end.” So as I returned home from my mission, I wasn’t expected to live the same standard of the principles I was as a missionary, so I had to learn how to apply the same principles in a different way. It was a very interesting process, and one that I still go through day by day and often struggle with because, well, life is tough! It was very tough having no restrictions to anything and not having a companion to keep me accountable. At first it was somewhat easy, if there was something that wasn’t inviting of the Spirit, I didn’t do it. I was still very receptive, responsive, and sensitive to the Spirit so it was easy to make strong in the moment decision without hesitation. Plus, I didn’t really have any interest in a lot of the things that distract from the spirit. I hardly watched any television or really meddle with any media for a number of weeks. I just didn’t care to partake. TV shows and movies just didn’t have any appeal to me. Plus, all music seemed foreign to me so I didn’t really care to listen since I had no clue what any of the words were or who was singing. So, I just listened to the Christian stations! But over time I started getting accustomed to those things again. However, I had to practice applying the principles to these things. Sometimes I messed up. I wouldn’t make the right decision, so I would have to promise myself to do better the next time and learn from the decision. Now, I ain’t saying I was listening to some hood rat stuff or watching some sort of trash, but I was trying to do the best I could to stay close to the spirit so some decision that may seem to be perfectly fine were a little not so good for me. And as I am sitting here typing this I am realizing I need to repent! LOL I ain’t being a bad boy or anything but dang I could do better. Couldn’t we all!!!

I think one interesting thing that I learned in the soon months after getting home was what it meant to continually build my testimony. On my mission, everyday was seemingly a testimony building day. Even the days when I felt like I didn’t do much (which was all the time) I still felt satisfied knowing that I went out and did the work of the Lord all day and didn’t quit when it was 100 degrees outside on my bike and I was completely worn out physically, mentally, and didn’t have much spiritual drive because of the exhaustion. I’ll tell you what, those days when absolutely nothing happened for me and my companion except for putting 20 more miles on our bikes' odometers were some of the best days I ever had. If you want to feel like you are pleasing the Lord, go out and work your butt off on foot and bike all day and have nothing to report but zeros. That my friends always had me going to bed knowing that the Lord was pleased with me. I can still to this day very vividly remember carrying my bike up the stairs to my apartment completely and utterly cleaned out of energy and just having enough energy to put forward one more step to the next stair, and then one more, and then one more, all the way to the top when I would just collapse in my apartment, and then starting planning and marking down zeros down the line for the day. It’s the days like those that make my memory of my mission so amazing. Sure, the amazing experiences were nice, the people were incredible, everything was amazing, but those days are what make me think back and realize I was successful. Anyway, what was I talking about. Totally got off track there. So yeah, the whole testimony thing. When I got home all of a sudden each and every day wasn’t a testimony builder. And all of a sudden I was exposed to things that posed questions to my testimony. Not that anything ever derailed it in the slightest, but it posed question to it. I remember one time specifically that prophets and apostles were questioned. I went to the temple the next day and asked the Lord to please confirm to me that what I knew to be true was indeed correct. Sure enough, the big man upstairs pulled through and I walked out of the temple that day with as much confidence that the prophets and apostles on the earth today are men called of God and when they work as leaders of the church they are inspired in all they do. Their council is correct, their decisions on behalf of the church are the will of the Lord in the time they are made, and they will not lead me in any direction but towards God the Father and Jesus Christ. The temple was huge for me when I got home. I made it a goal of going every week until I went to school, and I definitely fell short of that goal, but I definitely surely went a lot. It was such a rock for me. It kept me strong and kept my new life in perspective with my eternal goals and was a big influence on helping me remember who I have the potential to become in this life and in the life to come, which helped me have strength day by day to do good and stay close to the principles that changed me on my mission. I am so incredibly thankful for the temple and the blessings that it has brought me! I have been greatly blessed by the knowledge it has brought me and the man it has helped me become!

Another thing was helped me a ton was the Sabbath day! My goodness, I never knew how great the Sabbath was until it was a completely different day than the other six! I realized that on my mission everyday was basically the Sabbath in a real world sense. Sundays were good and all, but when I got home the other six days weren’t spend studying and teaching the gospel and weren’t spent doing nothing but the work of the Lord. All of a sudden I had six days that were testing me and trying me, and by the time Sunday rolled around I was definitely in need of an influx of the Holy Spirit! I just loved being able to go to church, take the sacrament and have a different experience with the sacrament than I had as a missionary, sit and listen to the lessons and take in the good word, and then walk out of the church doors feeling refreshed and ready to take the week head on. And then I had the rest of the day of course, and by the end of the day I would be locked and loaded and ready to go! I definitely grew a much strengthened testimony of the Sabbath in the months soon after I got home. On my mission I had more of a doctrinal/logical testimony, but it was able to be turned into a much more experience based testimony!

My oh my, I don’t know what to talk about next. I have a few other things I think I could talk about but I ain’t sure if they belong here.

I guess I will leave y’all with just one more experience I’ve had recently. It all starts in San Angelo, TX in November 2015. I received a heartbreaking transfer assignment to leave Odessa, TX and go to San Angelo. I was definitely excited to go to San Angelo as I had heard lots of great things about it. But Odessa was just so great and there were a few things that I was just really heartbroken to leave. However, I saddled up and rode on down to San Angelo. On the drive down to San Angelo I was told that there was a man in my area with quite the story. He had been married to a member of the church for 50+ years but had never gotten baptized. However, just recently before I got there he had accepted his first baptismal date EVER. So I was pretty excited. Well, turns out this man was just flat out difficult. He just couldn’t feel the spirit for the life of him. Nothing worked for this guy. I read the longest teaching record I ever saw on my mission for this man that was filled with highly spiritual experiences for all the people involves except for him! I soon found the same thing happening. My goodness. In the words of his wife, “HE’S A MULE!!! And you know what other word I could have used in place of ‘mule’!” Well, his baptism date was approaching and we sure as heck knew it wasn’t happening then. So we bumped that unit back to the 19th of December. That date just naturally turned into the 26th of December since his family was planning on being there for Christmas. You know, gotta take the two for one when you can, right? Well, that came and went. NOTHING. For a long time we spent our time over there trying to help him get his “answer”. Let me tell ya, that route had us all running in circles for years. It wasn’t ever going to happen! So basically we just tried to pressure him into getting baptized so that he could receive a witness that what he did was good after receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. Not gonna lie, the whole “pressure him” thing kinda worked. And in our defense we didn’t intentionally pressure him, it just kinda happened one day! It was all backed by scripture so it’s all good. After getting him all nice and pressured we were one day sitting there and were talking to Mac about what we should do going forward to help him since he sure as heck wasn’t getting any answers anytime soon. We were talking about The Book of Mormon and how that was going for him. He was reading it every day but wasn’t getting tons out of it. So, I had the idea to just come over and read with him and not worry about anything else besides just helping his understand what he was reading and apply it. So, we went that route. I remember sitting there and discussing his baptismal date with him as well one day and thinking, “man, he needs to do this himself”. So, I told ol’ Mac that he should choose his own baptismal date this time around. He had his mind made up two days later that it would be January 23rd. Fair enough. About two weeks prior to the 23rd we were having our chat with Mac about the whole ordeal, and I remember exactly him saying, “Well, I guess I need to get baptized…”. And just to say this, that wasn’t a brain blower for us. Mac said garbage like that all the time and then just say, “but I need answers.” So here we are, Elder Andrus, Mac’s wife Carolyn, and myself just chillin’ waiting for his follow up line. But after a few seconds Mac was still just sitting there looking at his iPad. So now we were starting to get a little anxious. A few more seconds. Nothin’. A few more seconds go by and by now I don’t think there was a heartbeat in the room minus Mac’s. I don’t know how long of a time went by before Mac looks up at us all and goes, “I guess…..”. It’s safe to say that there was definitely a few minutes of clarifying work done after his famous, “I guess….”. Hahaha typical Mac! Well, January 23rd rolled around and Mac was indeed baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints with a while chapel packed with people there to witness the grand event. Well, a year went by and it was the time for Mac and Carolyn to be sealed for eternity in the Lord’s house. I had the profound opportunity and pleasure to attend the ceremonies for Mac receiving his endowment and the two of them getting sealed in the Lubbock, Texas temple. It was kinda funny keeping an eye on Mac during the endowment ceremony because I knew just how confused the man was at the whole thing, just as we all are our first time! It definitely kept a smile on my face. When I walked into the Celestial Room ol’ Mac was standing right there and came right up to me and thanked me for helping him get there. I asked him how he felt, and he said that he felt good before we had a little laugh about him being rather confused at that point in time. Anyway, we then all made our way to the sealing room. My goodness, being a witness to Mac and Carolyn being sealed was incredible. Just incredible. It was definitely a bit different of an experience than most sealings, as the two of them have been married for over 50 years. It was really cool because the whole focus of the ceremony was specifically on the sealing, and nothing to do with their civil marriage. I guess that was the first sealing I've been to, so I have nothing to compare it to, but I assume it had a different feel than sealings usually do. After the ceremony they stood at the head of the room and we all walked by and hugged them and whatnot on the way out. Being able to look into Mac’s eyes and have him thank me sincerely for helping him be there that day was one of the greatest moments of my life. There was an 82 year old man (give or take a year) standing there after having just been FINALLY sealed to his wife of 50+ years, making Carolyn’s 50+ year dream come true. Knowing that I had a part in that process was extremely humbling as a missionary, and then once again extremely humbling when the whole sheebang was capped off that day with their sealing. I told Mac that all two years of extremely hard work were worth it if the only thing I got out of it was to be there with them that day. I know that there will be something tying us together closely in the eternities. They aren’t just a family that I had the pleasure of helping, they are eternally connected to me and will be part of my eternal family forever.

Well, I’ll wrap it up there. If you’re still reading, props to you. I probably would’ve peaced out a few pages ago. But here you are, wasting your life away reading my make-up journal entry minus the tear splatters.

I just want to share my still growing testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ and his work here on the earth. I don’t get to share it nearly as much as I used to and I want to take any opportunity I get. I know that you and I have heavenly parents who have an incomprehensible love for us. Although it is hard to see, our Father’s plan is perfect and he is actively engaged with every second of our lives making his plan come to pass. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1 Cor 13:12) I know that our perfect Father’s perfect plan is all centered on and is in action because of his perfect son Jesus Christ and that our elder brother knows us perfectly because of his individual suffering for you and I. “Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.” (Isaiah 49:16) I know that he lives and will be our advocate with Father to overcome the demands of justice to allow us our promised eternal blessings. I know that the Lord has restored the fulness of his gospel on the earth today through a prophet. The restored gospel allows us freedom and gives us strength against the powers of the adversary. It cleanses you and me from sin, and it sheds light on the sometimes difficult to find truths in our world that we live in. I know that the Lord has worked through a continual line of prophets since the Prophet Joseph and continues working today through President Monson. Although imperfect in their day to day lives, the prophets and apostles are all men called of God and work under the Lord’s revelation to guide his children in these, the last days. Through my studies I have grown a profound love for the word, aka the scriptures. I love them, I love them, I love them. I know that The Book of Mormon is the key to coming to know the Lord better than by any other source. The teachings are profoundly correct and powerful, the stories are brought to life by the Spirit, and my soul is filled with light as I read the words on each page. I love the rest of the scriptures as well! I have found such truth and understanding throughout each book of scripture that the Lord has given us. I love the Lord, I love his gospel, I love his word, and I love his church!

God bless ya!

Btw... I don’t really have a plan for continued blog posts. I know I talked more about it at the beginning of this unit. I have some stuff I may get around to sharing at a later date. Not much more relating to my mission, but just life stuff.

I'M HOME!!!!!

Lubbock Temple with the McMunn's

Boise Temple after a rad sesh

I got to see Pres & Sis Heap in Lubbock!!!