Confidently TERRIFIED!

January 2026 has arrived. Somehow! 

Time transitioned from January 2024 in a jump, almost as if without existance - yet I have lived!

I haven't even noticed as days bolted through weeks, months, and now years? I am astonished at years. 

How? Mostly in peace and prosperity. 

This January I am insecure, emotional, and absolutley terrified. 

My husband and I have chosen to serve as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We have been assigned to the Utah, Salt Lake City, Headquarters Mission (USLCHM). 

We will leave our home, familiar life, and personal activities for 23 months. Will those years pass into oblivion as quickly as 2024 and 2025? Obviously the months will march into the future at the pace the calendar dictates, yet what about me? my home? familiar life? and activities?

When I was young enough to cling tightly to my father's knee, screaming and fighting as he attempted to help me attend a church nursery, after cuddling me to his shoulder and comforting me enough for sobbing tears to subside (only slightly), he pointed out another crying, snotty red-faced child and asked me if I wanted to look like THAT. I did not! I wanted to look like the imagined adorable, curly-haired, only-girl-so-far, in the Forsyth bunch of 5 boys that observers regularly commented I was as they patted the ringlets my mother fussed into place after every bath. 

Since that time I attempt to make choices to avoid traumatic confrontations, and especially to look like and become (at least in part) the 'model of princess propriety' that might make my parents proud. That elusive model, however, always has puzzled and frustrated. 

Intervening years have illustrated graphically how distant models of opinion are, and always have been, from my thoughts and words and actions! That comparison is debilitating, undeniably out of reach - except ...

Except, I know who I really am. I am not adorable, and as I age tangled curls have become stiffly straight and white. I am not the little sister of 4 older brothers, I am not the big sister of 6 younger siblings, I am not a wife, a mother, a grandma - I have such relationships, yet am more than any and all those titles, and other titles, that are mere labels competing for allegience to someone affixing designations.

I am a spirit daughter of God - a father more loving and merciful than even the physical father willing to patiently comfort and teach his fearful daughter. A father who could see beyond toddler (and teen) tantrums and phobias. God knows I am terrified. He comforts and sustains AND invites my fears toward forward faith. 

I can count on Him, a good, kind, all knowing, forgiving father who promises grace to me and others through Jesus Christ, His son. They are real. I know this truth. If Peter could walk on water, can I?  Peter's example is instructive: "... Lord, save me." Matthew 14:30

I am confident I can count on a wise Heavenly Father willing to let me learn the differences and nuances of who I am and what I can become. Scriptures and prophets provide fundamental examples, patterns, and directions to all who want to know truth. Can I follow God's directions? Can I become more than I now am? 

I can try! I can even help others around me to know and grow - to try. I can share time, talents, and blessings. And I can keep learning - gaining knowledge of this phyical place called earth (and my existence here), and the place called heaven that can seem as foreign as other countries and cultures. 

Details of trying to follow ...