simply words.

Yeah, yeah, I know that doesn't make sense to any of you. But to me, today means a whole lot of things.

This picture was taken on September 19th, 2013. and yes, that is a mission call.

This story spans about 2 years, so bear with me. In November of 2012, I was just getting ready to embark on a great adventure to the Holy Land (Jerusalem) for a study abroad program. Around that time a lot of things were going on around me, a lot of my girl friends were deserting me...to go on missions. The month before in the October LDS General Conference, President Monson had announced that girls could now serve missions at age 19 and guys could go at 18. Practically half the population of Provo, UT turned in their mission papers within a couple of months of that mind-blowing announcement. As for me, I thought "well, that's cool, good for them, doesn't make a difference to me." See, I had never ever planned on serving a mission, never had a desire, just didn't think it was something I wanted or needed to do. I remember telling my parents in high school (after my sister had left on her mission) not to get their hopes up for all their kids to serve missions because I was definitely not going. I never really liked doing what everyone else was doing, I had to be different, I had to do things my own way and I liked it that way. So at first when everyone was jumping on the "let's all serve missions because we can" bandwagon, I made sure to steer clear. Until about 2 months later.

To be honest, I am not really sure what changed. All of a sudden, I just really wanted a mission call. I saw countless girls, close friends of mine, get mission calls to awesome places...like Fiji, Japan, London, The West Indies, etc, and they were soo happy and so excited! And I wanted that, so badly! I think it is just human nature that when we see someone else's happiness, we desire whatever it is that is making them that happy. I started thinking more and more about a mission, like maybeeee it wouldn't be such a terrible idea, and maybeeee I'm supposed to go because I am starting to feel this desire thing that you always hear so much about with missions. I talked to my sister one night about it and we both just ended up on the floor crying. She was crying about all the great experiences she had on her mission and I was crying because I felt like I was supposed to go and it was a really scary thing...and let's be honest, mostly we were just crying because we are girls and we cry about everything. That same night, I texted the guy in charge of scheduling meetings with the bishop and asked if I could meet with him, soon. He set me up for a meeting with my bishop the next night, and I just remember thinking, "I'm pretty sure I am crazy." But I felt excited. I had this whole idea in my head that I was going to finish my mission papers, get my call, and then call my parents and tell them I was about to open my mission call. I wanted it to be something crazy and surprising like that, because I'm like that. But then I found out that you couldn't put in your papers until 120 days before your availability date, and I didn't plan to leave until after Jerusalem, so like the next summer.

It was a Tuesday night that I met with the bishop, and I just remember feeling so good about telling him I wanted to start my mission papers, and of course he was really excited for me as well. I told him about how I was still planning on going to Jerusalem, but that I wanted to finish my papers before I left so that he could submit them right before I got home and I would get my call around the same time I got back (because my family would all be in town). It was the perfect plan. And I am all about making plans, which is kind of ironic because I am also impulsive. That is probably why none of the plans I do make ever work out. Anyways...after talking to the bishop and him walking me through the process, I left his office and called my parents to tell them I had started my mission papers. They were so surprised, but soo excited!! I felt like I was really doing something right, something that my parents could be proud of me for. I hadn't felt like that in a long time, it was a great feeling! I started promptly on filling out my papers (online) and doing the routine doctor and dentist visits. Literally, within weeks, everything except for my final bishop and stake president interviews, was done. I was just about to go home for Christmas Break, I had just broken up with the guy I was dating, and I had decided that I would do my final interviews when I got back from break, right before I left for Jerusalem. Everything seemed pretty perfect at that point, I was literally set up for the next 2 years of my life...study abroad for 4 months, mission for 18.

When I went home to New Jersey for Christmas, everything seemed to just hit me like a ton of bricks. I had time to just think. And I realized that thinking was not something I had really been doing a whole lot of lately. I had a meltdown and I realized that I wasn't so sure I actually wanted to go on a mission, that maybe I did just get swept up in the wave of girls deciding to go on missions. I tried to think back to when I had decided for sure that I wanted to go, and I couldn't remember a distinct spiritual confirmation that I was supposed to go, it was just exciting, and it felt like a good thing to do. And I knew it was, I knew it was a good thing to do, but I didn't know if it was a good thing for me to do. When I got back to Utah and I went to my final bishop's interview, it turned out a little different that he had probably expected. Within seconds of being in his office, I broke down in tears. I just cried, "I think I might have changed my mind." haha, I felt so dumb. I just told him I wasn't so sure about this thing anymore and it stressed me out to try and make this decision that was going to last for 18 months and I had never wanted to go on a mission and I don't even know why I am doing this...blubber, blubber...who knows if he even heard a word of what I said between sobs. But he was so understanding and so patient. He just told me that he felt that maybe it was a good idea for him to just hold onto my papers, for me to go to Jerusalem and focus on that experience, do some praying and conversing with the Lord, and then if I decided after I got back that I still wanted to go, then we could move forward. Wow, awesome. I felt so good about that, and the stress just kind of melted away. I just decided not to think about it while I was on my study abroad, and then I would figure it out later...ha nice try Sara...

The day before I left for Jerusalem, I wasn't even sure I wanted to go. Actually, I like really didn't think I wanted to go. I had kind of gotten back together with the guy I was dating last semester (the one I had broken up with right before Christmas break) and things were really good between us, and I had such a solid group of friends that I didn't really want to leave, and I was going to the Middle East! Like seriously? I was thinking maybe this was another dumb idea I had.

But...I put on my big girl panties and got on that flight to Tel Aviv, Israel. And I am soo grateful I did because those next 4 months changed my life. I made some incredibly friends, learned so much, and strengthened my testimony of my Savior, Jesus Christ more than I can express. I absolutely loved it, and I ache to go back all the time! While it was an incredibly experience, it was also hard given the choice I still had yet to make, about whether I was going to serve a mission. While we were there, 20 students received mission calls, 18 of which were girls. Every time another girl got her mission call and all 81 of us sang "Called to Serve" and she read her call out loud in the Shekel Shack, those feelings of desire came back to me. What the heck was wrong with me?? Oh...right, I am the most indecisive person in the history of the world, that's what. If you asked my roommates how many times I told them I was going to go on a mission, and then changed my mind, they probably couldn't even count to that many. After my friend Kara got her mission call, to freaking FIJI (awesome!) Jenessa--one of my besties from Jeru-- and I spent like 3 hours on the floor in Classroom 1 just crying about how we felt like we were supposed to go on missions, but we didn't want to! (I am starting to realize how much crying went into this whole mission decision, and it's a lot...wow...I promise I am not normally this emotional). So after crying for hours, I really felt like Heavenly Father was telling me that I was supposed to serve a mission, but for some reason, something just didn't totally feel right and I didn't know what it was yet. I decided that I would still wait until I got home to make any solid decisions. But Jenessa knew for sure she was going.

Yep, this beautiful girl got her call while we were in Jerusalem and they now call her Sister Hutchins, serving in the Florida, Jacksonville mission. I miss her so much.

So....let me fast forward to when I got home (I will even skip the nightmare of missing flights and losing my bag on the way back to Salt Lake, maybe some other day). Anyways...about a month after getting home, I started dating an incredibly guy. We were in the same ward the semester before I had left, and we got along super well, but...I was dating someone. (Oh and by this point, that guy that I had been dating that I was sad to leave, was happily engaged and getting married at the end of the summer. Ha, no hard feelings, I was happy for him, it wouldn't have worked out between us anyways). But anyways...everything just clicked with this guy I had started dating and within weeks, I was almost positive that we were going to get married. Then things just felt really right, and I thought...here's my answer! I am not supposed to go on a mission because I am supposed to get married! It all seemed so obvious now. He was so perfect, I felt so comfortable around him, my family loved him, he was funny and well-dressed, and most importantly, I LOVED kissing him. Ha kidding, that wasn't the most important thing, but it was pretty far up there. Things were just going really good. And it was a big deal to me because I could actually picture myself marrying him, and I hadn't felt that way about any other guy I had dated before. As things got more and more serious, and we talked about marriage, the girly Mormon side of me was thinking "yay! we are going to get married and I will graduate BYU with my Mrs. degree and I will finally get to utilize that "Wedding Ideas" board on Pinterest that I have been pinning to for years!" But...then the commitophobic, terrified of growing up and getting married side of me thought "Well...he's great, but I still have a lot of things I want to do before I get married, and I really don't want to marry the wrong guy, I'm still young..."

These thoughts were happening about the same time that my little brother left on his mission to Lima, Peru, around the end of July, early August. Watching him leave on his mission brought back a lot of thoughts and feelings about my mission papers that I had started and my old bishop was still hanging onto. I had left something unfinished, and I didn't like that feeling. I decided that maybe since I wasn't totally 100% sure about whether I should marry this guy, maybe I needed to go on a mission still. So I told him that was what I felt I needed to do, and it hurt us both. He went home for a few weeks before school started, and I went home to finish my mission papers (my dad was my home ward bishop, so that worked out nicely). Once again, I knew they were proud of me and happy about my decision to serve a mission. For some reason, that meant more to me than I realized. My papers were officially submitted on September 5th, 2013.

When I got back to Utah and started up Fall semester, which I thought was going to be my last semester of school for almost 2 years, I realized that I missed him, a lot. We started to hang out, but just as friends, and we all know how well that always works...going from being bf/gf to just being friends...yeah it doesn't. So within a few days, we had just gone back to dating and I was happier than ever. I wanted to keep dating, I wanted to make things work, and we started talking seriously about getting married. We talked about how we could be engaged by the end of the year, and married by next June. I wanted that, so badly. But, I was still going to be receiving a big white envelope in the mail in a few weeks and that was the decision I thought I had made. When that day came, September 19th, initially, I was thrilled! I was finally going to get to have that same happiness, excitement, and joy that I had seen so many other people have when they opened their mission calls (or so I thought). I invited the people that knew I was going on a mission (which wasn't really that many), and my parents had flown out to see me open it. I planned to open it at about 8:30 and about 20 minutes before that, all of a sudden I didn't want anyone there, I didn't even want to open it. As more people came, I just wanted to tell them to leave. I was so anxious and I was literally shaking- again, I thought "I think I might have changed my mind." But as everyone circled around the family room at my sister's house, I knew I had to open it right then. As I ripped it open, I was so hopeful to read "London, England" or "Australia," so when instead I read:

Dear Sister Van Wagenen,

You are hereby called to serve as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. You are assigned to labor in the Arizona, Scottsdale Mission. You should report to the MTC on February 5th, 2014. You have been assigned to speak in the English language.

I tried to do that whole "smile and laugh because you are happy even though you are sobbing" thing that I had seen so many other girls do on the YouTube videos I had watched. But it was totally fake, I wasn't crying because I was just so incredibly happy, I was crying because I felt miserable and I was sad. Everything about this immediately felt so wrong, and I hated it. Arizona? Well, that wasn't exactly the adventure I had thought I was going to be on for the next year and a half. Yes, I was disappointed in where I was called, but that was only a tiny part of it. I felt hurt and confused. I had prayed every day leading up to getting my call for the same thing. I pleaded with Heavenly Father to let me feel peace when I opened my mission call, no matter where I was called, if it was right, if it was what I was supposed to be doing, I just wanted to feel peace. And I know for a fact that the feeling I got when I opened my mission call was not peace. Everyone could not leave fast enough, I wanted to be alone more than I've ever wanted to be alone before. I tried to fake excitement and be a good sport about the "I hear Scottsdale is a really nice place" comments, but I breathed a sigh of relief when everyone had left and I didn't have to worry about how badly my mascara was streaked down my face. But my family was still there and they wanted me to talk about it, so I left. I got it my car and just drove. I contemplated just driving the 9 hours down to Arizona to check it out, but instead settled on driving up to Squaw Peak where I sat in my car, curled up in a ball, and just cried. I cried and cried and prayed and cried. I can count few times in my life where I have ever cried so much. I prayed to understand, to be accepting, to know what I was supposed to do. I felt incredibly alone. After a few hours, when my tear ducts were dried up, and my head felt like it was going to pop off my body, it hurt so bad...I decided I should go. But I didn't want to go back to Leah's and I didn't want to go to my apartment. So I showed up at his house and he gave me water and advil and lay next to me on the couch as I cried myself to sleep. It had been an awful day.

The only picture I have of me after opening my call, after crying too much.

Squaw Peak at 2am.

I woke up around 4am and went back to my apartment. I planned my day carefully so that I could avoid as many people as possible. I slept in until my roommate had left for the day, I woke up and went on a run in the afternoon, followed by a quick shower and I went to the library, not to study, but to be alone. I called in sick to work, and ignored all 55 text messages I had received in the last 24 hours. I was reluctant to go to dinner at my grandparents with my parents because, even if we didn't talk about it, I knew what everyone was thinking about. After saying next to nothing at dinner, I left to go on a date with him. As the night went on, I realized how incredibly confused I was. I had zero idea what I was going to do, or what I was supposed to do. I had already hurt him and put him through so much of my indecisiveness, that I didn't want to do that anymore. So after our date, we went on a walk and I told him that I knew we weren't supposed to get married. That was a lie. I didn't know anything, absolutely nothing. But he was better off without me and I knew it would be easier for him to move on if I completely closed the door on us. He told me he felt relieved, glad that I had made some sort of decision and that he wished me the best. It sucked. I was literally doing everything I could to make myself as depressed as possible in a matter of days, what was I thinking?

The next few months were hell. No question about it. The feelings of confusion, hurt, fear, anxiety, anger, they never left. Sometimes they would subside, sometimes they would increase, but they were always there. The mission decision consumed my mind 24/7. I had a hard time sleeping, focusing in class was near impossible, I would forget to take tests, it was ridiculous. I never prayed so hard, or read scriptures or so many conference talks before. I grew closer and closer to the spirit, but still continued to go back and forth between whether or not I was going to go on my mission. I felt a sense of obligation to go, like I already had a call, I couldn't back out now. I had lost my alternative, I wasn't going to get married, so I might as well just go. Maybe this was all supposed to happen because I am supposed to go. But as soon as I started thinking about going, within minutes I would think that it wasn't right, that I didn't want to go, and that it still didn't bring me peace to think about going. I talked to my bishop about it, got a blessing, talked to family members, all in hopes of reaching a decision. The biggest thing that I feel was holding me back from making the decision that I felt was right, was the fear of disappointing my dad. I hadn't talked to him more than twice since I got my call because I knew what he wanted me to do, and if I didn't make that choice, I didn't want him to be sad or disappointed in me, especially considering how happy he had been when I initially told him I was going. It took me a long time to realize that this was MY life and MY choice and I needed to stop worrying about what other people would say or think, and do what I felt was right. In the end of November, I knelt down and prayed to Heavenly Father and told him that my decision was to not serve a mission. I have never felt more peace. When I had made that firm decision not to go, I felt such weight lifted off my shoulders and I felt peace! That was all I wanted. It was like Heavenly Father was telling me that He would have been totally happy with whatever I decided, but He knew that it was my choice and either one would be a good one, and He was proud of me for making that choice. My Heavenly Father was proud of me. And a few days later, when my dad came to visit, I told him my decision and he was proud of me too. I didn't disappoint anyone. Now I knew that I had made my decision, and I couldn't look back.

The next few weeks had some difficult times, when people at work, in my ward, or aunts and uncles, would ask me if I was excited to leave on my mission, and I had to tell them I wasn't going anymore. That was hard, but I felt confident. I didn't have to justify it or explain it to them, I just knew what I was supposed to do, and that was not going. Now that I had figured out this monumental decision in my life, I felt like I could be a real person again. Even amidst the confusion of the last few months, I had thought a lot about him, and we had gone on a few dates, and I thought that maybe now things could work out for us, now that I was a little less all over the place. So I wrote down all my feelings (much like I have in this blog post) in the form of a letter and put it on his car for him to read after finals were over and he went home for Christmas break. I got my hopes up about us, that's for sure. I thought that if things were to work out for us now, that it would make everything else make sense, that maybe it was just that the timing was off or something and that was what the whole mission thing did, was buy us some time. I felt really good and hoped he did too. But something I have realized lately is that rarely are two people on the same page unless you work really hard to get there. And I had just kind of came out of nowhere with my feelings all scribbled out on 9 pages of college ruled paper. So when he came back from break and we got together to talk about it, I shouldn't have been surprised when we weren't on the same page. And he told me almost exactly what I had told him 3 1/2 months prior, that we weren't going to get married, and that things were really over for us. My heart broke. I didn't know what it felt like to be rejected by someone you loved and wanted to be with, and now I did, and it hurt. At first, I just felt really bitter, and thought "he's never going to find someone as good as me" or "I hope I start dating someone before he does." and part of me still feels that way a little, but as time goes on, I am grateful. As much as it sucks, I think everyone needs a little heart break in their life, a little humbling every so often, and it was good for me. I also learned that we need to learn to live with our decisions, because I had made a decision 3 1/2 months ago that caused him to move on, and I just expected him to come back when I changed my mind. And it was like a sucker punch to the gut to realize that I couldn't do that, I couldn't expect that of him. Now, I think "I hope he finds someone half as good as me (ha, I've got to be honest, right?), that treats him a lot better than I did." I realize that I probably put way more detail about him in here than I originally intended, but he was a big part of story.

So that brings me to today, February 5th, 2014--the day Sara Van Wagenen almost went on a mission-- but I'm glad that instead I am falling asleep in my classes today, instead of saying goodbye to my family and friends for 18 months. But don't get me wrong, I think missions are incredible! And I admire everyone that does serve for 18-24 months because I hear it's tough work...and I hope to someday serve a mission with my husband because I want to share the gospel because I know it is so true! I also know that we don't have to be full time missionaries to share the gospel, and I pray every day for chances to serve and share the gospel in my life.

Today represents a journey, and a big decision and accomplishment for me. And though I don't know exactly where the path I am on leads, I know that my Heavenly Father is aware of me and is guiding me, as he has been for the past 21 years. And today, February 5th, will always make me grateful for hard times in my life that help us get just a little closer to where we are going. And I am happy, like legitimately happy (no fake smiles here), and I am excited about the future and what it will bring!

--I sincerely apologize to those of you who actually took the time to read this horrifically long blog post, but thank you.--

simply words.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Ghosts of Boyfriends Past….

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Remember, Remember the 5th of February...